My correspondent's letters were much more mendacious compositions. I am quite ashamed to tell you what long columns of flagrant description I was in the habit of reeling off--touching certain races in the Bois de Boulogne, soirees at the Tuileries, and working-men's "demonstrations" in Hyde Park--of which I was only an imaginative spectator! I used to rake up all my old reminiscences of the boulevards and cafes and prados, giving details concerning the "petit-creves" and "cocottes," the "flaneurs" and "grandes dames" of the once "gay" capital--gay no longer; and, interspersing them with veracious reports respecting the latest hidden thoughts of "Badinguet," and vivid descriptions of the respective toilets of the Empress Eugenie, Baroness de B---, Madame la Comtesse C---, la belle Marquise d'E---, and all the other fashionable letters of the alphabet--chronicling the very latest achievements in "Robes en train" and "Costumes a ravir" of the great artist Worth. Even the men folk of America--"shoddy" of course--dote on those accounts of European toilets, which we never see given in any of our papers, excepting where the appearance of the Queen's Drawing-Room may be passingly noted; or, when the _Morning Post_ exhausts itself over a "marriage in high life." When my spurious intelligence was dated from London, I had to draw on a fertile memory for popular rumours concerning revolutionary doctrine, and express a conviction that things were not going very well with John Bull, politically or socially, hinting, also, at the prospect of an early Irish rebellion--and, generally, manufacture similar "news" of a kind that is peculiarly grateful to the jaundiced palates of our English-hating, jealousy-mad cousins over the way. When Min came to know of this practice of mine, she did not like it. She wrote to me to say that it was acting untruthfully to pretend to correspond from a place when I was not actually there. The habit was certainly reprehensible, I admit, as I admitted to her; but, then, what can a writer do if blessed with a vivid imagination? Besides, I had a precedent in Goldsmith's _Citizen of the World_, you know; and, as Byron says-- "--After all, what is a lie? 'Tis but The truth in masquerade; and I defy Historians, heroes, lawyers, priests, to put A fact without some leaven of a lie. The very shadow of true truth would shut Up annals, revelations, poesy, And prophecy--except it should be dated Some years before the incidents related." Even on this side of the water, too, authors have frequently to use their pens as if they did not chance to possess a conscience--one of the worst possessions for any aspirant in the journalistic profession to be encumbered with, I may remark by the way! You seem to be astonished at my observation? I will explain what I mean more lucidly.