On our return homewards we discussed the conduct of the consul--our own consul--in this affair. We were led to doubt the propriety of his taking that money from us. We suspected that he wanted it, not to pay the French police any fees, but to put in his own pocket. We thought that, if our suspicions were accurate, the conduct of the consul was scandalous. I made inquiries. In a letter from the commissary of police I was informed that the French officers were not permitted to take fees, and that not one sou had been paid to a gendarme out of the 20_l._ taken from us. By direction of the French local authorities, proceedings against the British consul were taken in a local court. He disputed the jurisdiction of the French tribunals. He set up his consulship in bar of the suit. On this purely technical point--the merits of the case being taken from under the control of the court--an appeal went up to a court of appeal. The consul's plea in bar of jurisdiction was held to be a good one. The French judges held that the defrauded person being an Englishman, and the alleged offender being an English consul, the remedy was by an application to the Foreign Office in London. Memorials, setting forth all the merits or demerits of the case, and setting forth the miscarriage of justice in the French courts, accompanied by newspaper reports of the arguments and the decisions, were laid before a late Foreign Secretary. The answer to this memorial and evidence was, that, as the case had been taken before the French courts, and decided upon, his lordship saw no reason to interfere. Further explanations were offered, rearguing that the merits of the case against the consul had not been heard, that he took effectual means to prevent these merits from being touched by the French courts, and that the case was indeed remitted from French law to British diplomacy. Still, almost word for word, and to the same precise effect, was the answer. A third application, further endeavours to show the Foreign Office its duty, elicited only an answer, almost word for word, and to the same precise effect. So the matter was dropped, and it now lies where it was dropped a few years since. WHO WAS THE GREATEST CRIMINAL? About six years ago a detective officer, in the employ of the regularly constituted authorities whose local habitation is Scotland Yard, Westminster, was directed to track a young delinquent who had, it was said, forged the autograph of his master, a tradesman in the borough of Southwark. The search was not a very difficult one. The culprit, who had only defrauded some one of 50_l._ by that operation, I dare say, thought he had got possession of an inexhaustible fortune; or I should rather say that he acted as if he thought so.