a wholesome rage on detection, the latter is armoured in the brass of breeding, and looks cool and surprised that you should object to being fleeced by her. Upon any approach to complaint, instead of excuses, she shows you cynically that she took you in in order to fleece you. A French “woman of letters,” in the lowest acceptance of that unpleasing term, the old, semi-extinguished type of bluestocking, once told me that she always calculated on making a clear profit of two hundred francs a month on the board of her “paying guest,” otherwise she did not regard herself as having made a good thing out of it. As she charged a hundred francs a month for a bedroom, twelve pounds a month was the sum she counted upon as legitimate profit. Her terms were sixteen pounds a month—light, fire, afternoon tea, and wine extras—so that the unfortunate fleeced one had exactly the value of four pounds for the sixteen disbursed. Needless to say, this literary hostess only found stray fools from perfidious Albion, recommended by amiable folk over-seas, who guilelessly believed the young ladies despatched to her would enjoy the benefit of exalted social relations, since titles were never out of her mouth, and upon her own description of herself she entertained daily the highest of the land. She traded upon the British weakness for titles, but took care to conceal from these gulled ones the fact that French doors, whether of nobles or of commoners, are not easily opened to foreigners, and never to “paying guests,” whom the careful French fear as possible adventurers.