“The Most Beautiful Woman in Paris” is more a study than a story, yet the firmly wrought, breezy narrative style of the author is here at its best. The story runs that a social connoisseur, Prince Agénor, upon seeing at the Opera the wife of a lawyer, pronounces her to be the most beautiful woman in Paris. Then ensue flattering newspaper notices, the inflamed ambition of the advertised beauty, costly gowns, a new coupé--all that madame may appear fittingly at a social function at which it is announced that she is to appear, as well as the Prince. Madame does appear, but she is neglected because the Prince forgets to come to make her acquaintance--he has already found another “most beautiful woman in Paris.” The author’s narration is lively, as always, and his social observation confident and minute, while his characteristic, playful irony is second only to that of another unique story, “The Chinese Ambassador.” In this we have as a _motif_ the unsettled political conditions existing at the close of the Franco-Prussian War. The story is told with delightful humor, in diary form, by a Chinese Ambassador Extraordinary who has been sent to France and England with rich presents to placate the French and English governments, and also to arrange official reparation, for the massacre of some foreign residents in China. Then follow a series of confusions. There is no longer an Emperor in France, there are three rival French Republics, and another _coup d’état_ seems imminent. So the Ambassador, not knowing whom to approach, keeps the presents, and waits. Soon he goes to England, where he meets the Queen. She accepts the apologies as well as the presents, but in conversation with some French women at a social function in London he finds that there are three claimants to the French throne, Napoleon III, the Duke of Orleans, and the Count of Paris--all in exile--to say nothing of the three rival presidents, Gambetta, Thiers, and Favre. He is again much in doubt as to which to approach with his mission, as he receives such contrary advice from all quarters. Upon his return to Paris, however, he finds the government has again changed its capitol, and that a seventh government is in the ascendancy--the Commune. When he learns that Paris is burning, he concludes that it is “a dead, destroyed, and annihilated city.” In two weeks, however, order is restored, and the Ambassador decides that it is still the most beautiful city in Europe, and the most brilliant, for the Republic of M. Thiers is now undisputed. To him he delivers his mission. “The Story of a Ball Dress” is couched in an old form--the ball dress tells its own story; but we have a kaleidoscopic picture of the change of affairs before, during, and after the war--that war which plays so large a part in the writings of both Daudet and Halévy.