and her sisters play a very important rôle in the life of the Amazing City.) As for stout, diamond-covered Baronne Goldstein (wife of old bald-headed Goldstein of the Bourse), she invited judges and deputies to rich, elaborate dinners, at which the oldest, the mellowest, the most comforting wines from her cellars were produced; and when M. le Juge and M. le Député had been rendered genial and benevolent by those rare, warming vintages, she led them into a corner of Goldstein’s vast gilded _salon_, and there besought them, while breathing heavily under her breastplate of diamonds, to procure for her “just one little yellow ticket.” Naturally, all these State officials replied with a bow: “I will do my best. Need I say that it is my dearest desire to oblige you?” And our ornaments of _le Tout Paris_ were satisfied; already regarded that ticket of tickets as being safe and sound in their possession. When October dawned, Madame la Comtesse, lively Pauline Boum and stout Baronne Goldstein ordered striking dresses and huge, complicated hats for the Steinheil _cause célèbre_. In their respective _salons_, over their “five o’clock’s” of pale tea, sugared cakes, and crystal glasses of port, malaga and madeira, they excitedly described how they had driven to the tranquil, ivy-covered villa in the Impasse Ronsin where Madame Steinheil’s husband and mother had been assassinated on the night of the 30th-31st May eighteen months ago. And how, after that expedition, they had proceeded to beautiful Bellevue, seven miles out of Paris, to stare at that other villa, the “Vert Logis,” where the “Tragic Widow” received her lovers. How they gossiped, too, over the intrigue between the accused woman and the late President Félix Faure; and what fun they made of certain high State dignitaries who were said to be in a state of “panic” because they had been habitués of the Steinheil villas! “I would not miss the trial for the largest and finest diamond in the world,” declared these ladies. “It will be extraordinary, overwhelming, supreme,” exclaimed the male guests at these tea-and-madeira afternoon parties. “We shall still be discussing it this time next year.”