with fortitude in the endurance of cynical imposition and lucre to meet complacently exorbitant demands upon their purse, should avoid this interesting creature, and go to a hotel. In the first place, the opening of private doors to the traveller or over-seas student is so foreign to the habits and instincts of her race, that once she has allowed the brilliant idea of “taking in” a foreign boarder to enter her narrow mind, she starts immediately by magnifying her legitimate profits, and in her ardour to amass francs on ground where she is practically free from all commercial or professional restrictions, she is not beset by any paltry fear of overstepping the limits of honesty. Her sole conception of that homely virtue lies in its rigid application in her own regard, in an austere resolution to see that nobody on earth shall cheat her of the value of a single farthing. I know not which is the more astounding: her inflexible insistence on the honesty of her _bonne_, or the flexibility of her conscience when she comes in contact with alien claims upon her own honesty. Her favourite boarder is the young American or English art student. Young women she naturally prefers, because it is easier to fleece them, and they are shyer of monetary disputes than men or experienced women. She will not scruple to demand for the poorest table imaginable and the perfunctory service of a single maid-of-all-work, the terms of a first-rate _pension_ or a comfortable hotel, where there are servants in plenty and the table is varied and excellent. Her excuse is that, not being a boarding-house keeper or a hotel keeper (“Would that she were either!” dejectedly moan her victims), she is entitled to relatively higher prices for the privilege of a seat at a private table. In the region of bills she is altogether her own mistress, for she has no commercial reputation at stake to balance her notions on the subject of profits, which are colossal, and so she enters every extra she can think of with gaiety of heart, and a smiling conviction that all is fair that puts cash into the big pocket of the rapacious little _bourgeoise_. Not that she will risk frightening off a possible boarder by a revelation of this view beforehand, and no mention of those formidable trifles called “extras” will be made in the preliminary treaty. Then it will be all beguilement and blandishment, allurement and promise, with a hint of paradise through the open door of her modest establishment. Within there, seems to say this cheering creature, will you find the warmth of home, maternal care and tenderness when you are ill, and intelligent sympathy in all hours. Ten pounds a month seems a small sum to pay for this, and you enter gratefully, not disposed to criticise, on the contrary, eager to see everything through the rose hue of satisfaction, to find another fifty or seventy francs added to your bill at the end of the month for wine, light, coffee, service, linen, and baths. When fire comes to