instantly, in imagination, one of a surging crowd, throwing his hat in the air, or drawing Gambetta's carriage through the streets of Paris. I had only to speak of Alsace to bring him to a mood of sullen ugliness and hatred. He was, I have no doubt, a pretty good-tempered man; he was certainly warm-hearted; his apparent harshness to his balloon-venders was probably nothing more than necessary parental severity, and he was always ready to recognize their successes. But I have never seen a more wicked and desperate expression than an allusion to Alsace called up in his face and in his whole bearing. Sometimes he would laugh, when I mentioned the severed province; but it was with a hard, metallic, cruel laugh.' He felt the loss as he would have felt the loss of a limb. The first time I brought up the topic, I saw the whole bitter story of the dismembering of France.

There was another subject which called out that same bitter revengeful look, and that cruel nasal laugh,—the royalist factions and the Bonapartists. When we spoke of them, and I watched his face and heard his soulless laughter, I saw the French Revolution.

But he could always be brought back to open childish delight and warmth by a reference to the United States. Our government, in his eyes, embodied all that was good. France was now a "république," to be sure, and he rejoiced in the fact; but he plainly felt the power and settled stability of our republic, and he seemed to have a filial devotion toward it closely akin to his love for Auguste.

How fortunate we were! Here were no Légitimistes, no Orléanistes, no Bonapartistes, for a perpetual menace! Here all citizens, however else their views might differ, believed, at least, in the republic, and desired to stay her hands. There were no factions here continually plotting in the darkness. Here the machinery of government was all in view, and open to discussion and improvement Ah, what a proud, happy country is this!"Que c'est une république!"

I gathered enthusiasm myself from this stranger's ardor for the country of his adoption. I think that I appreciated better, through him, the free openness of our institutions. It is of great advantage to meet an intense man, of associations different from your own, who, by his very intensity and narrowness, instantly puts you at his standpoint. I viewed the United States from the shores of a sister republic which has to contend against strong and organized political forces not fully recognized in the laws, working beneath the surface, which nevertheless are facts.

One acquaintance leads to another. Through Sorel, whose house was the final resort of Frenchmen in distress, and their asylum if they were helpless, not only Fidèle, but a number of other Frenchmen of that neighborhood, began to come to me with their small affairs. I was the avocat who "speak French." I am afraid that they were surprised at my "French" when they heard it.

There was a willow-worker from the Pas-de-Calais, a deformed man, walking high and low, and always wanting to rise from his chair and lay his hand upon my shoulder, as he talked, who came to consult me about the recovery of a hundred francs which he had advanced at Anvers to a Belgian tailor upon the pledge of a sewing-machine, on consideration that the tailor, who was to come in a different steamer, should take charge of the willow-worker's dog on the voyage: the willow-worker had a wife and six children to look after. This was a lofty contest; but I had time then. I found a little amusement in the case, and I had the advantage of two or three hours in all of practical French conversation with men thoroughly in earnest. Finally, I had the satisfaction of settling their dispute, and so keeping them from a quarrel.

Then there was a French cook, out of a job, who wanted me to find him a place. He was gathering mushrooms, meanwhile, for the hotels. One day he surprised me by coming into my office in a white linen cap, brandishing in his hand a long, gleaming knife. He only desired, however, to tell me that he had found a place at one of the clubs, and to show, in his pride, the shining blade which he had just bought as his equipment.

But the man who impressed me most, after Sorel, was Carron. He first appeared as the friend of the cook,—whom he introduced to me, with many flourishes and compliments, although he was an utter stranger himself. Carron was a well-built and rather handsome man, of medium height, and was then perhaps fifty years of age. He had a remarkably bright, intelligent face, curling brown hair, and a full, wavy brown beard. He kept a rival boarding-house, not far from Sorel's, in a gabled wooden house two hundred years old, which was anciently the home of an eminent Puritan divine. In the oak-panelled room where the theologian wrote his famous tract upon the Carpenter who Profanely undertook to Dispense the Word in the way of Public Ministration, and was Divinely struck Dumb in consequence, Carron now sold beer from a keg.

It was plain at a glance that his present was not of a piece with his past I could not place him. His manners were easy and agreeable, and yet he was not a gentleman. He was well informed, and evidently of some mental training, and yet he was not quite an educated man. After his first visit to me, with the cook, he, too, occasionally looked in upon me, generally late in the afternoon, when I could call the day's work done and could talk French for half an hour with him, in place of taking a walk. He was strongly dramatic, like Sorel, but in a different way. Sorel was intense; Carron was théâtral. He was very fond of declamation; and seeing from the first my wish to learn French,—which Sorel would never very definitely recognize,—he often recited to me, for ear practice, and in an exceedingly effective way, passages from the Old Testament. He seemed to know the Psalms by heart. He was a good deal of an actor, and he took the part of a Hebrew prophet with great effect. But his fervor was all stage fire, and he would turn in an instant from a denunciatory Psalm to a humorous story. Even his stories were of a religious cast, like those which ministers relate when they gather socially. He told me once about a priest who was strolling along the bank of the Loire, when a drunken sailor accosted him and reviled him as a lazy good-for-nothing, a fainéant, and slapped his face. The priest only turned the other cheek to him. "Strike again," he said; and the sailor struck. "Now, my friend," said the priest, "the Scripture tells us that when one strikes us we are to turn the other cheek. There it ends its instruction and leaves us to follow our own judgment." Whereupon, being a powerful man, he collared the sailor and plunged him into the water. He told me, too, with great unction, and with a roguish gleam in his eye, a story of a small child who was directed to prepare herself for confession, and, being given a manual for self-examination, found the wrong places, and appeared with this array of sins: "I have been unfaithful to my marriage vows.... I have not made the tour of my diocese."

Carron had an Irish wife (une Irlandaise), much younger than he, whom he worshipped. He told me, one day, about his courtship. When he first met her, she knew not a word of French, and he not a word of English. He was greatly captivated (épris), and he had to contrive some mode of communication. They were both Catholics. He had a prayer-book with Latin and French in parallel columns; she had a similar prayer-book but in Latin and English. They would seat themselves; Carron would find in his prayer-book a sentence in French which would suit his turn, on a pinch, and through the medium of the Latin would find the corresponding passage in English in Norah's prayer-book and point it out to her. Norah, in her turn, would select and point out some passage in English which would serve as a tribute to Carron's charms, and he would discover in his prayer-book, in French, what that tribute was. Why should we deem