bewitching Paris. I am burningly anxious to know all there is to be known about each minister of war, and take their repeated defections almost as a personal grievance. I eagerly examine the interpellations and their consequences, count majorities and minorities in the turbulent Chamber, follow the fortunes of the Senate, applaud, disapprove of all that happens with the ferocity of a citizen who pays to keep the machine going. I know well that I am a fool for my pains, and that I would be far better employed in minding my own business. But it is all the fault of Paris for being so abominably, so mischievously interesting. She it is who will not let you let her alone. She is like a vain woman; she must have all attention concentrated upon herself. She clamours for your notice, and despises you for giving it. If you stand aside with folded arms and look elsewhere, she will get into a passion, create a frightful scene to attract your attention, and when you obey her and give it in unstinted fashion, she turns on you and sneers and rails at you for a foreign spy and busybody. Poor Mr. Bodley, all ignorant of the fretful indignation he often roused in France by his thirst for information, was for long regarded by many an honest Frenchman as a spy.
Oddly enough, I hold that the pleasure side of Paris, its fashionable world, is the least of all to
