Max Nordau, in his _Paradoxes psychologiques_, thus disposes of the Parisian woman: "The _Parisienne_ is entirely the work of the French romancers and journalists. They make of her, literally, whatever they wish, physically and intellectually. She speaks, she thinks, she feels, she acts, she dresses herself even, assumes attitudes, walks and stands upright, according to rules which the writers _à la mode_ impose upon her. She is in their hands a doll furnished with springs and obeys with docility all their suggestions," etc. On the contrary, it is probably safe to say, speaking generally, that the French romancers systematically defame their compatriots, and that even Parisian society is not the institution it is represented to be in novels, on the stage, and by many of the essayists. It has been reserved, for example, for a very recent writer, M. Jules Bois, to portray, _for the first time in France_, the indignation of the fiancée at the fact, almost constant, that her future husband comes to her without that freshness of soul and body which is required in her case. It would not have required very accurate social observers, it would seem, to have discovered earlier this phenomenon. M. Bois counsels the wives not to compromise themselves by weak forgiveness of the egotistical and adulterous spouses. The frightful conflagration of the Bazar de la Charité, in the Rue Jean-Goujon, on the 4th of May, 1897,--the most terrible catastrophe of this nature that had been seen in Paris since the fire at the ball given by the Austrian ambassador on the 1st of July, 1810, in honor of the marriage of Napoleon I and Marie-Louise, and the burning of the Opéra-Comique in 1887,--offered, in the long list of its victims, a most tragic demonstration of the fact that the women of Paris of the highest society knew how to occupy themselves in works of practical benevolence. Of the hundred and seventeen victims, all but six were ladies and young girls; and the roll of illustrious names was headed by that of the Duchesse d'Alençon. This philanthropic institution was founded in 1885 by M. Henri Blount, its honorary president; its annual bazaars, for the benefit of the poor, were held at first in the Salle Albert-le-Grand, then in the hôtel of the Comtesse Branicka in 1888, in the following year in that of M. Henry Say, and from 1890 to 1896 in two houses in the Rue de la Boëtie. In 1897, M. Michel Heine placed at the disposition of the managers, gratuitously, a large open space in the Rue Jean-Goujon. The new bazaar was here inaugurated on the 3d of May, and the receipts exceeded forty-five thousand francs. On the day after the catastrophe, some charitable person donated, anonymously, to the Œuvre de la Charité the sum of nine hundred and thirty-seven thousand francs, representing the amount of the sales of the preceding year, that the poor, also, might not suffer by this catastrophe. A subscription opened