In this world the young men, as elsewhere, have the best of it. Theirs the licence of manhood in all things. The moment dinner is over they put on their evening suit and file off (_filer_, as they say themselves, in their pleasant French slang) in the quest of pleasure. If they are well-to-do they have no difficulty in getting accepted in the world of third-rate titles. Tarnished dukes will cordially shake their hands. As there is no peerage in France to control aristocratic pretensions, they may have as much as reasonable man can desire of the society of marquises and counts, provided they take these exalted personages on trust, and do not seek to examine too closely their blazons. The method of making one’s self a count or a baron in Paris under the Third Republic is very simple. You may purchase a Papal title at a not exorbitant cost. In Abel Hermant’s _Le Faubourg_, a porcelain manufacturer was awarded the title of count by the Pope in return for a dinner-service he sent him, which was explained on the grant as _pour service exceptionelle_. In France and America only are Papal titles taken with gravity, and pronounced with all the sounding magnificence of hereditary names. But a simpler way still, and less costly even than the interference of Rome, is to buy a plate, and have graven on it first a name prefixed by the particle _de_. When this has been accepted without demur, and the newspapers have a dozen times announced you here, there, and everywhere as M. de ⸺, then boldly apply the title of your predilection, and behold you are, without more ado, a noble of France. No need of papers or permissions. You are noble by the grace of your own goodwill; and as most of the people around you are playing the same game, there is no earthly reason why your friend should be more of a count than you are of a baron. And so you may aspire to a larger _dot_ from your bride. If you are in the army, you may even look as high as your general’s daughter; and when you travel abroad or journey in the provinces, you will be made to understand what a fine thing it is to be able, thanks to your own valour and judgment, to inscribe yourself in hotel books as M. le Baron or M. le Comte. You will be served better than when you were plain Mr. So-and-So. Waiters will help you off and on with your coat with a deference hitherto not enjoyed by you in your anterior plebeian state, and the society papers will record your great doings with gusto and fervour. Who, under these circumstances, would not be a count or a marquis? Had I known years ago of the facilities and advantages offered in France to titled adventurers, I might have had the wit and wisdom to style myself countess of this or baroness of that, the sole existing representative of an Irish King or a Norman house. Indeed, such is the predisposition of the French _bourgeois_ to believe in the noble origin of his acquaintance, that one stoutly maintained before me that O and Mac were the Irish equivalents