and from Paris over France, he has become a sub- scriber to a clipping-bureau, just as the countess has done. He ■will send me the smartest things that are written about him. This is all that he can do for me, for I must understand that he has no time to attend to my affairs. He will see, later, — " when we shall be in power," he writes me, care- lessly. Everything that happens to me is my fault ; I have never known how to conduct myself ; there has never been any sequence in my ideas ; I have wasted the best places, without profit. If I had not been such a hot-head, I, too, perhaps, would be on the best terms with General Mercier, Coppee, Deroulfede ; and perhaps, although I am only a woman, I should see my name sparkling in the columns of the " Gaulois," which is so en- couraging for all sorts of domesticity. Etc., etc.

To read this letter almost made me cry, for I felt that Monsieur Jean is quite gone from me, and that I can no longer count on him, — on him or on anybody! He does not tell me a word of my suc- cessor. Ah! I see her from here, I see them from here, both of them, in the chamber that I know so well, kissing and caressing each other, and making the round of the public balls and the theatres together, as we used to do so prettily. I see him, in his putty-colored overcoat, returning from the races, after having lost his money, and saying to her, as so many times he has said to me :