It is said that the plateau on which Constantine stands is honeycombed with caves and subterranean passages, and that formerly it was possible to walk round the city underground. Probably these caves were excavated by the river before it had carved out its present bed at a lower level. These great natural storehouses were used in troublous times for the keeping of provisions and munitions of war; and during the French attack of 1837 many of the inhabitants took refuge in them. They are now for the most part bricked up, but a very remarkable grotto lies beneath the Hôtel de Paris, and may be visited from the hotel. There is a museum at the Mairie. It is, as Mr. Lucas found the Soane Museum in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, very difficult to get into; and it is still more difficult to get out of, especially if you are a sympathetic listener. The good lady whose place is in the porter’s lodge, and who has the key, will, when at leisure, conduct you to a long room containing the usual assortment of battered coins and broken pottery, and one gem, a bronze statuette of Victory, found beneath the Kasbeh. When you are sufficiently depressed by the antiquities, your guide has something in store for you. She will show you—you only, you are given to understand; it is an exception;—the marble staircase and the saloon in which the Mayor receives. And very fine the marble columns and marble panels are, and you will notice how here a butterfly with long tails is faithfully depicted in their rich grain, and there the head of an old Arab to the very life. And if you will have the goodness to look out of window, you will see a house on the hill opposite, and just beyond it on the other side is the quarry from which all these marbles come. And in all Algeria there is no such a Mairie as this. And you may be led to discuss systems of local government, and to mention that you yourself, who speak, take some small share in such matters, if only as a member of an Education Committee, or a County Council, or what-not. And you will perhaps be pained to discover that the very name of your important county town is unknown to your entertainer; a pain to be mitigated later by the reflection that the caretaker of its Town Hall is perhaps not fully informed as to Constantine. And the _pièce de résistance_ comes last. You shall see the _salon_ in which the Mayor conducts the marriages. And very suitable and dignified it is. Has your Mayor so fine a marrying-place? You are constrained to confess that as far as you are aware your Mayor has nothing to do with any marriages but his own. A quick look as at an impostor detected, a shrug of the shoulders, and a sigh for the barbarous condition of foreign countries, and it is over.