be envied. If I were a millionaire, I think I should prefer London, with its larger public life, its more varied hospitalities, for the investing of my millions in the thing called experience. Even a British ass, with time on his hands, and millions to squander, can discover an original method of going to the dogs and casting his millions into the bottomless pit. But what can the French idiot do after he has sent his shirts to London to be washed, and invested in an automobile? He is such a superlative dandy and humbug—I would fain use a hideous word, which describes him still better in three letters, if it were not for its inexcusable offensiveness—that he cannot bring sincerity to bear upon his imaginary passion for sport, and looks ten times more absurd when he is playing the athlete than when he is contentedly playing the fool. He is "the sedulous ape," not to literature, like Stevenson in his young days, but to the Anglo-Saxon; and the folly lasts on to the brink of age.
The Faubourg holds itself more aloof than ever. It is now not even on saluting terms with the Republic. Still its life must be lived after a fashion, and it must give balls, if for no other reason than the ignoring of ministers and their wives. It cannot be said that the country at large is much affected by its doings; and if we are to judge the inhabitants by the fiction of the day,—the dialogue novels of Gyp, of Lavedan, of
