man kept on perfecting himself, and would have become honest if he had only been allowed to live." In 1855 Mérimée had become as ardent a worshipper of the Dictator as his "bourgeois" could desire.

As the name of the lady to whom Mérimée wrote the numerous letters which have just been published is a secret, it is natural that there should be much curiosity to discover it; but even if it were known, scandal would hardly be gratified. As far as the letters relate to the writer and his correspondent, they seem to us very dull reading. There can clearly have been nothing more tender than friendship in their attachment at any rate on the lady's side. It appears that in six years they had met only six or seven times, and that, counting up the minutes they had spent together, they had been in each other's company only some three or four hours in all. Their meetings seem to have been always brief, and snatched at long intervals; and the letters give one the impression rather of an intelligent woman pleased with a clever man's wit, and the man flattered by her sympathy, than of a pair of lovers. Down to his mother's death in 1852, when he was forty-nine years of age, Mérimée lived under her care, "reposing absolutely on her," says M. de Loménie, "all the material cares of his existence." After his mother's death her charge devolved on two of her friends, who almost invariably accompanied him, and watched over him. These were two English ladies, and M. Taine describes the trio marching along in silence, Mérimée in the middle, with one elderly devotee carrying his bow (he had taken to archery for his health), and the other his box of water-colors. M. de Loménie attributed Mérimée's melancholy to his isolation as a bachelor; but perhaps M. Jules Sandeau was justified in declaring that he was born one. He was certainly not the man either to inspire or to return an ardent passion. The academical philandering of the letters is tedious after you have read one or two, they are interesting only when they afford glimpses of the society in which the writer lived.

66

Although Mérimée's writings are probably not much read in this country, he was himself a frequent visitor here, and was well known in a certain section of English society. He was rather proud of his knowledge of English one of his six languages and kept himself well acquainted with our current literature. But he had not much sympathy with the nation. "The English," he wrote, are individually stupid, but in mass an admirable people. Everything that can be done with money, good sense, and patience, they do; but they know no more about art than my cat." The new House of Commons is "a frightful monstrosity," and shows "what can be done with an utter want of taste and two millions sterling." The oratory is equally bad; "nothing more verbose, more gobemouche, and blagueur' can be imagined than the majority of the speakers. Lord Palmerston, with his bushy gray whiskers, struck him as a 66 gay gorilla;" Cobden pleased him only because he was "the very opposite of an Englishman," in never uttering commonplaces, and having few prejudices; Mr. Gladstone seemed to him "in some respects a man of genius, in others a child; there is something in him of the child, the statesman, and the fou." He found the slowness of English dinners intolerable, especially as he could get nothing to eat that he cared for except roast mutton, and not always that. "I spent two days," he says, "at Cambridge and Oxford with the reverends, and on the whole I prefer the Capucins. I am particularly furious against Oxford. A fellow had the insolence to invite me to dinner. There was a fish four inches long in one great silver dish, and a lamb cutlet in another; all this served in magnificent style, with potatoes in a dish of carved wood. But never was I so famished. It is part of the hypocrisy of these people. They love to show strangers that they are sober, and having taken luncheon they don't dine." Once we find the poor man laid up at an hotel with a bad cold, and nothing to drink but port wine; and it is impossible not to sympathize with him. What disgusts him most is the hérissonnerie of the English. At a country house, he says, they cannot help

talking a little at dinner, but afterwards they break up into isolation, one with a book or newspaper, another writing letters. On the other hand, a Frenchman takes the trouble to amuse himself, and in doing so amuses others.

Mérimée gives us some lively "interiors" at the different Imperial palaces. All is not unalloyed happiness at Court. He groans over knee-breeches and reckless changes of temperature. From Compiègne he writes, "One can't sleep in this place. The time is passed in being frozen or roasted." And again, "We lead here a terrible life for the nerves and the brain. We have rooms heated to 40 degrees in order to go into the Forest in an open charà-bancs. It freezes at 7 degrees. We return to dress, and find ourselves in a tropical temperature. How the women stand it I can't think. I neither eat nor sleep." At Fontainebleau it is much the same. "We took a stag yesterday, and dined on the grass; the other day we were soaked with rain, and I caught cold. Every day we eat too much. I am half dead. Destiny did not make me for a courtier." At Biarritz he was almost happy. "Today we have to dress, but the rest of the time there is not the least toilette. The ladies dine in high dresses, and we of the ugly sex in morning coats. There is not a château in France or England where one is so free, and without etiquette, nor where there is a châtelaine so gracious and so good to her guests." There are many American visitors at Biarritz, and when they come to the Imperial villa, Northerners and Southerners-it is 1862have to be parted on different sides of the room lest they should eat each other. A dull time at Compiègne is enlivened by the arrival of the Duke of Athol and some of his kinsmen, "four Highlanders in kilts.". "It is droll enough to see their eight bare knees in a drawing-room, where all the men wear knee-breeches and tights;" but much consternation is produced when they whirl round to the strains of the bagpipe. One day the Prince Imperial -"un drôle d'enfant, mais quelquefois terrible "- gives a dinner-party to his "The Emperor friends. young himself mixed the champagne with seltzer-water, but the effect was just the same as if they had drunk the undiluted wine. They were all drunk a quarter of an hour afterwards, and my ears still ache with the noise they made." Now there is a Spanish dinner in the Forest, or a picnic on the grass, "like bonnetiers from the Rue St. Denis." Another time he writes, "Since my arrival I have led the agitated life of a manager. I have been author, actor, and director. We have played with success a piece a little immoral, of which on my return I will tell you the story." There was also a charade about which some fears were entertained beforehand; but a young lady who played in it said assuringly, "Oh, it will be all right; we shall show our legs in the ballet, and that will do for everything." "N. B.," says Mérimée, "this lady's legs are like flageolets, and her feet anything but aristo

cratic."

There are other signs of the taint of Bohemianism which was the fatal cancer of the unhappy Court. A sketch of a ball at the Hôtel d'Albe (belonging to the Empress's sister) may match with the famous Correspondent of the Telegraph's account of other Imperial festivi

ties:

The costumes were very beautiful; many of the women very pretty, and the age showing its audacity. (1.) The women were décolletées in an outrageous way, both above and below. On this occasion I have seen a sufficiently large number of charming feet and many garters in the waltz. (2.) Crinoline is declining. You may expect that in two years the dresses will be short, and that those who have natural advantages will be distinguished from those who have only artificial ones. There were Englishwomen who were quite incroyables. daughter of Lord —, who is charming, was as a Dryad or something mythological, with a robe which would have left all her breast bare if this had not been remedied by a maillot. ... The ballet of the "Elements" was composed of sixteen women, all pretty enough, in short skirts and covered with diamonds. The Naiads were powdered with silver, which falling on their shoulders, resembled drops of water. The Salamanders were

The

powdered with gold. . . . The supper-room, with a gallery round it, the domestics in the dress of pages of the sixteenth century, and the electric light, resembled the feast of Balthazar in Wrowthon's (sic) picture. It was no use for the Emperor to change his domino; he was recognized a league off. The Empress had a white burnous, and a black loup, which did not disguise her in the least. Many dominos, and, for the most part, very stupid. The Duke of- was got up like a tree, a disguise after the story about his wife, a little too remarkable. If you do not know this story, here it is in two words: His wife went to Bapst and bought a set of jewels at 60,000 francs, saying she would send it back next day if it did not suit. She sent nothing back, neither money nor jewels. Bapst asked to have his diamonds back. He was told that they had been sent to Portugal, but finally they were found at the Mont-de-piété, where the Duchess of paid 15,000 francs to withdraw them. This is the eulogy of the time and the women!

By the side of this picture may be put a description of the company at Marshal MacMahon's recent ball: "A severe propriety of tenue was observable, and a remarkable absence of very low dresses and those sleeveless corsages which one so often sees in the front boxes of the Italian

Opera House. Young girls, as a general rule, were as simply dressed as any of those who figured at the Court balls of Queen Victoria twenty-five years ago." Perhaps a little public decency will not be thought too reactionary. When the Emperor began to affect Liberal measures, Mérimée was clear-sighted enough to see the hopelessness of the experiment. In December, 1867, he writes:

What shall I say of the politics of M. Ollivier and the rest? There is no use in their turning their phrases so elegantly, and affirming that they are profoundly convinced; they seem to be second-rate actors who imitate the first roles in a way that deceives nobody. We are growing smaller daily. There is only M. de Bismarck who is a true great man.

And again in June, 1869:

What afflicts me most in these sad affairs is the profound stupidity (bêtise). It make one hide one's face. The danger is that there is a sort of emulation for stupidity as for everything else, and between the Chambers and the Government, God knows what may be done!

In his next letter he had grown more desponding :

I am sure that we are going to have in words and deeds enormities for which there will not be enough boiled potatoes. Alas! that may finish by projectiles of a harder kind! What a misfortune that the modern spirit should be so flat! Do you believe it was ever so bad before! There were ages when people were more ignorant, more barbarous, more absurd; but then there were here and there some grand geniuses to make compensation, whilst now, as it seems to me, there is a levelling down of all intelligence to the lowest point.

In November he met M. Thiers at Cannes, and found him " brought back to common-sense by the immense folly of the country," and ready to fight again, as in 1848. But Mérimée doubts whether he does not overrate his strength:

It is much easier to break the bags of Eolus than to mend them and make them air-tight. It seems probable that we shall have a fight; the Chassepot is omipotent, and can give the populace of Paris an historic lesson, as General Changarnier said But after having tried this, what is to be done? Personal government has become impossible, and Parliamentary government without good faith, without honesty, and without skilful men, appears to me not less impossible. The future and the present are very dark for us.

Then comes the war, and at the end of August Mérimée is not without hope of driving out the Germans, or, better still, burying them all in France. But even then "we shall not be at the end of our miseries. This horrible butchery, it is idle to dissimulate it, is but a prologue to a tragedy of which only the Devil knows the end. A nation is not shaken with impunity as ours has been. It is impossible that, from our victory as from our defeat, there should not spring a revolution. All the blood that has flowed will flow to the profit of the republic—that is, of organized disorder." Mérimée left Paris by one of the last trains before the city was invested. He died at Cannes on the 23d September.

THE COLLEGE-LIFE OF MAITRE NABLOT.

BY ERCKMANN-CHATRIAN.

CHAPTER THE SECOND.

AT that period the Hôtel de l'Abondance was one of the first in the country the roast meat, and the fricassées, and the fine wines of Madame Abler were famed from Strasbourg to Nancy. All the commercial travellers, all the landed proprietors of that part of the country, were sure to stop at L'Abondance, where they knew they could get an excellent dinner at forty sous, and as many rooms as they wanted. It was at that time a great thoroughfare, and of course, at the close of the vacation, when so many Alsacians and Lorrainers were bringing back their children to school, the crush was greater than ever.

A groom came to take our horse out. My trunk was carried up to the first floor, and we followed it to give our clothes a brushing, for we were white with dust; after which we returned down-stairs to dinner.

The long dining-room was full of visitors; whole families of Alsacians, fathers and mothers, children great and small, had all trooped in to see the town, and do a little shopping before leaving son or brother at the college.1

We found with some difficulty a small table and a space near a window. But we were admirably waited upon, and had soup, roast meat, a large dish of choucroute garnished with sausages, ham, and salad; and then walnuts, grapes, biscuits, cheese; and every dish accompanied with excel

lent wine.

"Now Jean Paul, I am going to introduce you to Monsieur Rufin, the Principal come along."

come up."

We came out, and crossed the crowded market-square. A few cuirassier officers, with their undress caps sloped over the left ear, and waists tightly compressed in the light shell-jacket, were leisurely strolling amongst the crowd, jingling their spurs. We turned to the left, up the Rue de la Sarre, and were soon ascending the broad flight of steps along the frontage of the old Capuchin convent, transformed under the Empire into a college. "This is the place," said my father, The principal entrance to the vestibule was still open, for the classes were only to open on the following day. The old tailor, Vandenberg, the college door-keeper, still allowed people to come and go, merely watching them through the narrow window of his lodge; but for all that the echoing of our footsteps under the hollow archway, and over the flags of the vestibule, awoke certain melancholy reflections in me.

We passed along the great corridor, through which the old monks used formerly to pass to their chapel, and whose long line of high narrow windows resembled an arcade. My father tapped at a door. There was an odor like in

Then we entered Monsieur Rufin's study, quite the study of a college principal. The waxed floor was bright and polished; there was a fine library; a large porcelain marble topped stove, banded with shining brass, stood in a

1 The University of France is not a local designation. All professors, public teachers, and masters are necessarily members of that vast body, which is an organization for the education of the country, reaching and covering every inhabited portion of it. The French colleges are either national (or imperial, or royal) or communal. Of the former there are thirty-nine, of the latter three hundred and twenty, mostly in a very imperfect and inefficient state. The constitution of the University of France dates from the year 1808, under the Empire.

corner.

The furniture was of walnut-wood, the curtains of dark damask; in a word, everything was grand and imposing. The high wide window looked out upon the great quadrangle.

Monsieur l'Abbé Rufin was a little, portly, comfortablelooking man, in a long black cassock, and with clean white hands. His left eye was dim and immovable, but the right was keen and watchful. Monsieur Rufin was reading, but he laid his book on the table, and rose to receive us, inviting us to be seated.

We took seats.

My father respectfully handed the Principal a letter from Monsieur Hugues, which no doubt contained everything that was satisfactory with regard to myself.

Very well," said Monsieur Rufin, after he had read it through, "this is quite sufficient. We will do our best to carry out your views. The classes will open to-morrow. You have only to get your box carried to the college, and we will find the young man a suitable place both in the schoolroom and in the dormitories."

He patted my cheek with his dimpled fingers, looking kindly upon me, while I was getting more and more confused.

"As he knows the declensions, the regular verbs, and the first rules of syntax," said the Principal," we may at once place him under Monsieur Gradus, in the sixth class; and he will begin upon De viris illustribus urbis Romæ."

I could not stir, and my father sat deeply attentive. "He is a fine lad," said Monsieur Rufin, after a short silence.

Then having taken down my surname and Christian rames in his register, received the fees for the first quarter, and given his acknowledgment, Monsieur le Principal was opening the door to us, when a flood of new-comers filled the ante-chamber - a whole family of Lorrainers — three boys who were to be enrolled, with their father and mother, and the curé of their commune. Seeing this party, Monsieur Rufin made haste to dismiss us, and turning round to the fresh arrivals, said,

"Pray come in."

We came out into the corridor, the door closed, and in silence we moved on to the street.

An uneasy feeling was creeping over me, while all my enthusiasm was oozing away. I felt as if I should have very much preferred to return home. My father, no doubt, guessed at my thoughts, and as we walked quietly on, he said,

"Now it is all settled; we will go and tell the people at the inn to carry your trunk to the college. You will find them all very good people. You will work well, won't you? You will often write home; and, if there is any need, I will come and see you. It is rather a difficult stage of our life, but we have all to go through with it."

I knew by his voice and manner that he was trying to control himself, and for the first time I appreciated the fulness of his love for me.

When he had given his orders at the hotel, we turned out again for a short walk through the town. He pointed out the principal buildings to me; and it seemed to me as if he spoke to me with a certain degree of consideration, as one would to a young man.

That," said he, "is the Palais de Justice; there the judges sit, and there, too, the standing timber is sold. There are the infantry barracks, and here is the military hospital," etc.

We visited every part of the little town, even its ancient prison, its infirmary, St. Nicholas, and its synagogue. All this was merely to pass away the time, and to put off the moment of our separation.

At half-past five we returned to the college: my trunk had arrived, the servant had taken it to the dormitory, and thither he conducted us. We spoke to Madame Thiébaud, the matron, and her son, who had lost an eye.

Up-stairs, in the immense long corridor, was a great crowd of pupils just arrived. The elder ones had each a small private room old monks' cells, looking into the inner court. They were all very busy settling their little

property, and handing over their stock of linen to the housekeeper. They sang and they laughed just like other folks when they have just had a good dinner; they looked at us as we passed them, saying, "There, that's a new fellow!" And there were people walking about the corridor with their sons.

Monsieur Canard took us to a higher story, where we entered the long dormitory. Here were long rows of small beds, in two rows, running in even lines from one end of the room to the other.

"This is the washing-room," said he, pointing from the open door at a couple of great tin water-jugs; "here the boys wash before going down at five to morning lessons."

And then at the very end of the room, close to the two bottom windows, he showed me my bed, already made, with its little round bolster, and its red-bordered counterpane; my trunk was standing at the foot of the bed.

All this stir and excitement, all these bursts of boyish laughter, all these strangers coming and going around us, gave me an unhappy presentiment of the isolation I should soon suffer. I looked around for some sympathetic countenance; but every one was busied about his own concerns. I was beginning to feel overwhelmed.

None but scholars in their third or fourth year, who have got well broken in, can laugh on returning to college; but all new boys, as I believe, feel a swelling at the heart, and a ball in the throat.

Well, after this glance at the establishment, my father thanked Canard for having conducted us about, and slipped something into his hand.

Night approaching, we came down again, and as we came into the court below, we found old Vandenberg, with his old gray linen cap drawn over his ears, his nose and chin almost meeting, his knitted jacket hanging from his stooping shoulders, and looking just like an old Capuchin monk risen from the grave, opening a small cupboard under the vaulted roof of the vestibule, trom which he drew a rope, and began to pull it. Then the chapel bell began to peal, its penetrating sound filled all the old corridors, and the pupils came down in double files.

It was the supper hour, which had been put earlier for the purpose of allowing friends and relations time to get home the same day.

They were mustering in the court, the little ones first, the big ones in the rear.

At that moment farewells and embraces began in all di

rections.

"Adieu, Jacques! keep up your courage!"

Adieu, Leon!- Come, my boy,

A few little ones cried, and their mothers with them. I put on the best face I could; but the moment when the bell ceased to toll, my father said, "Now, Jean Paul,” and held out his arms to me, and then my tears broke forth unbidden.

My father could not speak; he held me in his arms; and only in a minute or two, having recovered his composure, he said to me in a voice broken with emotion,—

"No more! I will tell your mother that you were a brave boy to the last moment. And now, work with all your might; and tell us as often as you can how you are getting on."

He again embraced me, and went out abruptly.

The same moment the door-keeper slammed the great door, turned the key, and now I was a prisoner! And without at all knowing how it happened, I was placed amongst the with our masters at our side, little boys; very we defiled by twos in good order to pass on to the dining

room.

That evening I was too deep in my melancholy reflec tions to take any particular notice of the long dining-hall, with its tall windows opening upon the garden court; its old oak reading-desk; the two old pictures, so thick with the crust of ages that nothing could be made out of them: the long tables at which we sat divided into sections. I did not even observe, at the end, the table of Monsieur le Principal, where the professors and assistant masters were eating better food than we had, and were drinking better

The other boys began to laugh, but Barabino reproved them, and said,

"Let him alone! By and by, I tell you, he will be at the top of you all!. He is out of spirits just now; so might any one be, especially after leaving behind the good dinners you used to get at home, and coming into this College of Saarstadt; there's no great satisfaction in seeing nothing but lentils, beans, and peas - peas, beans, and lentils on the table every day all the year round, dry without any butter, salad and no oil to it, and sour wine-in fact, just the sort of provisions which Monsieur le Principal calls in his circulars food, wholesome, abundant, and varied!' I can't say I like it myself. It is not jolly; less than that might make a little fellow look crest-fal en for a day or two."

Such was the opinion of big Barabino - plainly expressed and the sounds of laughter ceased. After supper, walking alone about the long corridor where my schoolfellows were telling each other about their holidays, I could willingly have cried again.

Night came at last, the bell rang again, and there was once more a mustering to go to the dormitory. All those footsteps, running in confusion up the old monkish staircase, seemed to me like thunder.

I recognized my own bed by the little trunk at its foot, and having undressed, I slipped into my narrow restingplace, without forgetting to say my prayers. The lamp was burning at the central pillar; Monsieur Hofframm, one of the masters, was slowly pacing up and down until we should all be in bed; then he put out the lamp, and went to bed in his own little cell at the corner of the dormitory.

Monsieur Rufin, on the stroke of ten, at the moment when the bugles were sounding the curfew at the infantry barracks, glided by like a shadow. The moon was shining through the window-panes in calm silence; my neighbors were fast asleep - and I too soon dropped off in my turn.

CHAPTER THE THIRD.

THE pale light of dawn was scarcely glimmering down the two long lines of windows between which we lay sleeping so comfortably, when that abominable bell began its janglings again.

Misery misery! it was five o'clock, and we had to get up already.

I can

Never have I known any wretchedness like it, and although thirty-seven years have passed over my head since that time, I sometimes fancy I can still hear old Vandenberg's bell with its clear, sharp, aggravating tones. still see my schoolfellows, waking slowly, rubbing their sleepy eyes, yawning, then wearily, wearily sitting up in bed, taking out the blacking pot, and the shoebrushes out of the night-table, and beginning to black their shoes; then they are all gathered in the washing-room, refreshing their faces at the large zinc wash-stand; then coming down to the schoolroom, where Monsieur Hofframm inspects hands and shoes before reading prayers.

That old ill-paved schoolroom, with its desks cut and hacked by the generations of scholars; the master in his chair beneath the smoky lamp, the scratching pens, the thumbing of old dictionaries, the exercises, the translations done by cribbing it is all before me still. I shudder at the remembrance, my flesh creeps when I think of

it!

a race to the refectory, where Canard and Miston are dealing out great slices of bread for our breakfast. Boys whose connections are known to be good, of whose parents Canard has a good opinion, get all the nice crusts; the rest, unlucky boys, whose fathers have slipped nothing but a piece of forty sous into Canard's greedy palm, will get crumb all the year round.

And moreover, those boys with rich parents will get, from home, hams, sausages, pots of jam and of compôte; of all of which, they will forget to offer any to their schoolfellows!

The first lesson, and the most instructive, at college, is this, and it is neither Latin nor Greek, but good Frenchnamely, if you want to earn the favorable notice of Monsieur Canard, of Monsieur le Principal, of Messieurs the Professors, and even of your schoolfellows, you will have to be rich.

Hence arise the very first glimpses of the nature of the position; by this royal road to distinction fools begin to learn that they are the superiors of boys who get no good things from home; for, as a matter of course, those who feed on the fat of the land are made of a richer kind of stuff!

From this point the poor boy begins to shrink within himself, to reflect with bitterness upon what passes around him, to nurse his indignation in silence.

Yes, this is the evil beginning of many other things, the point whence love departs, and all the harmony which should never cease to rule in all our hearts.

Base natures are early revealed; brought up in poverty at home, they are not the less fond of hams and preserves; they fawn upon the rich, they crawl humbly at their feet, they smile at everything they say, they hire themselves out to be their flatterers and sycophants; and as their reward, they are sometimes permitted by their patrons to lick the bottom of a jam-pot, or to nibble at the remains of a sausage.

Thus an alliance may become established between the fat bourgeois and his man of business. But this is only the exception; from that very day the two classes part asunder; and if, as it not unfrequently happens, the servility of certain professors towards those of their pupils who take private lessons, or whose parents are able to forward their interests, comes to be added to all the other advantages enjoyed by the sons of the rich, then the line is drawn sharper and deeper still; and so does the feeling of resentment too become deeper and sharper.

I was only ten years old, but upon coming down from Monsieur Gradus' class the very first day, I knew all this by instinct, just as I have told it you, and I said to myself,

"Jean Paul, here you are what Gourdier was at Richepierre. Work hard, take care of yourself, and don't expect anything from anybody."

I had observed Monsieur Gradus smiling upon the sons of Monsieur Poitevin, the rich land proprietor at St. Nicholas, who was a friend of Monsieur Rufin's. I had seen him look caressingly at Monsieur Vaugiro the nephew of a ci-devant colonel of the Imperial Guard, who had become a priest when the wars were over; I had seen him look coldly and haughtily upon the sons of the poor, and especially the shabby day-scholars, whose schooling was paid for by the municipal council of Saarstadt.

These last had to be careful what they were about; never were they to hear a word of encouragement; humiliations came down upon them in never-failing succes

sion.

A child can see or guess these things; I understood the consequences of not being rich, and I formed the resolution never to suffer myself to be trodden down and domineered over by a superior race.

And now that I have spoken my mind, let us go on. There were fifteen in our class - great and small boys who had long determined what career to choose, and boys who did not know what a career meant.

(To be continued.)

THE "GREAT WORLD" IN FRANCE.

BACHELOR life.

THOSE who judged Frenchmen by the samples of the race who adorn the Parisian boulevards every afternoon from four to six would take them to be a people fond of refreshments. The serenity with which they drain those long glasses of opal poison called absinthe, their protracted sittings over that mild decoction of gentian-root, salt, and barley which seems to be especially brewed for them under the name of "bock," and their knowing cries for drinks of which the mere names pass wetly over their tongues,

66

"vermouth-grenadine," "mélé-cassis," grog à l'Améri

caine," "chartreuse," "bitter-cuirassé," - all this stamps them in the foreign eye as a thirsty people. But the café is a middle-class and Bohemian institution, frequented mainly by tradespeople, Bourse men, professional subalterns, second-rate artists, and journalists. To a Frenchman who lives above these spheres, who claims in fact to be of the Great World, the café is a place offering no more attractions than an hotel bar to a decent Englishman. He never visits it, save under compulsion, and he would apply the term pilier d'estaminet to those of his society who did. Foreigners, therefore, who, on the strength of their guidebooks, may think that they see before them a convivial and égalitarian blending of all classes at those marble tables lining popular highways, delude themselves, and they are still more mistaken if they judge any particular café by its showy outside and well-dressed customers to be an aristocratic house. There is but one aristocratic house of beverage in Paris, and that is Tortoni's; but Tortoni's is a glacier's not a simple café, which makes a difference. A lady can go once in a way to Tortoni's and take an ice, accompanied by two gentlemen (note the two, for this is essential); or the Duc de Sangbleu and his friend M. Pistache might stroll in there after the theatre for a cup of chocolate or a glass of orgeat. But if you met either of them alone there at any other hour than breakfast time, it would be that he had an appointment; and in this case he would have ordered a glass of harmless liqueur which would be standing untasted before him when the person he expected came in. This, again, would be essential - firstly, to prove that the Duke or M. Pistache had no taste for the liqueur in question; and secondly as a polite assurance to the expected comer that he was not behind his time. When Great World Frenchmen lay down social laws they hedge them with a delicate shading of observances the breach of which is winced at like a misspelt participle; and as regards cafés the merits of the case may be summed up in the remark that to be seen refreshing one's self alone there is thoroughly bad form.

The Duc de Sangbleu belongs to one of the four prominent clubs in Paris, and so of course does M. Pistache, who passed in on his friend's shoulders. It is a grandiose place which differs from a London club in that it occupies a suite of rooms only instead of an entire palace, is more costly to breakfast and dine at than even the Café Anglais, and is given over from eleven P. M. every night until past three in the morning to little games of hazard, at which a man may lose double his year's income without surprising any one, not even the waiters. But this club is not haunted by young men save till four or five in the afternoon; throughout the earlier part of the day it belongs to elderly members of the sort who read the Revue des Deux Mondes and talk feelingly about one another's digestions. Neither the Duke nor M. Pistache make of the club their home, nor have their letters addressed there, and M. Pistache does not even dine in the place, for he could scarcely walk into the dining-room without being called upon to join a table where there were three or four men richer than himself, and if he yielded often to this temptation as he needs must do to be thought a good fellow - his $4000 a year would soon grow a trifle small for him. If we want to know how M. Pistache disposes of his bachelor life without falling into money straits, let us call on him some morning when he is leaving his sumptuous rooms towards midday

to breakfast at the restaurant to which he susbscribes by the year, or to be the guest of the Duc de Sangbleu, who has a cook of his own. It was mentioned on a former occasion that M. Pistache's rooms were gorgeous with satin and upholstery, and we have only to add now that they are so because no French bachelor contents himself with a shake-down, or consents to hire furnished lodgings. To live en garni is opprobrium to a man. The reputable bachelor, be his revenue $40,000, $4000, or $400, is expected to have chairs, tables, and bed-curtains which are his private property; and such is the coziness to which celibates like M. Pistache attain that one cannot reasonably wonder at their reluctance to introduce such a disturbing element as a wife into their homes. As to M. Pistache's clothes, he manages them by paying $150 a year to a tailor, who supplies him with a couple of suits a year to keep, and brings him countless other suits which are taken away as soon as, M. Pistache has worn them half a dozen times. What becomes of these left-off suits is a matter which concerns the tailor, and possibly some of his customers who are not of the Great World; but in return for his $150 M. Pistache is always arrayed as imposingly as M. de Sangbleu, nor does he ever meet on the limbs of a friend addicted, like him, to the $150 system, with the coat or pantaloons he discarded the week before. In his hats, scarves, hosiery, and walking-sticks, as also in his pocketbooks, watch, and jewelry in general, M. Pistache is English; not that he frowns upon native workmanship, but because grand-genre is a species of rubric against which there is no kicking; and genre insists that a young Frenchman of status shall be clad as if he haunted Pall Mall. This said, it will please every one to know that for 3000 francs a year M. Pistache may breakfast and dine every day of the year at one of the renowned restaurants, and be served as if he were a partner of Baron Rothschild's. As he is out of town for three months out of the twelve, and either dines or breakfasts out three or four times a week during the other nine, the restaurateur does not make a bad thing of it; but then, neither does M. Pistache, who gets educated to all the mysteries of good cookery. Apropos of this savory subject, it must be recorded that breakfast-giving is one of those rages which grind down the Parisian bachelor as implacably as New Year's gifts and Easter eggs. A bachelor is not expected to give dinners to any man; but an acquaintance newly introduced, a friend from the provinces, a lawyer, stockbroker, banker, or any other business person with whom the bachelor has had relations of a not unpleasant nature, counts upon a periodical breakfast, and gets it. If the breakfast be generously ordered, it should last from midday till close upon five, and the 'guests should feel that they profoundly love one another before they separate.

We are supposing, however, that if M. Pistache has been the guest of the Duc de Sangbleu, the breakfast has been unceremonious, for as soon as the coffee and cigars have been enjoyed the friends have to think of the committee of the Society for the Encouragement of Woodcocks, which is to meet at M. de Sangbleu's house at two. The woodcocks are encouraged by MM. de Sangbleu and Pistache on the same principle as the Bald are cared for by Mmes. de Rosethé and de Mignonnette, because men of the world must do something good with their time. The Duke is president of the society, and M. Pistache derives a very pardonable vanity from being one of the committee whose mission it is to distribute woodcocks' eggs impartially throughout the departments which are suffering from a dearth of these valuables. One may estimate the benefits conferred by the ornithophilist association by this fact, that Government has been appealed to it always is in these cases to grant a large sum of money for the purchase of woodcocks' eggs, and the only difficulty arises from the doubt as to whether the woodcocks roost under the protection of the Minister of Commerce, his colleague of the Public Works Office, or the Board of Fine Arts. A few hundred pages of reports have been printed at the expense of the Society to elucidate this moot-point; and meanwhile M. Pistache has had the honor of accompanying a deputa