But if, as reported, M. Lépine loves his pair of bathrooms, he loves the streets better. As in his official days, behold him here, there and everywhere. A brawl or a fire, and there he is. Now in an omnibus, next in the underground railway, up at Montmartre, down on the boulevards, amidst exclamations of “Voilà Lépine!” and the salutes of the police. Only a private “citizen,” but he is still addressed as “M. le Préfet.” Merely the master of a comfortable _appartement_, of a couple of bathrooms—but is that enough for a Frenchman of action and genius? Gossips predict that M. Lépine will next be seen in the Chamber of Deputies, or that he will help M. Georges Clemenceau to wake up the Senate—the “Palais du Sommeil.” For my own part I fancy that, should a crisis arrive, the ex-Chief of the Police will be requested to “direct operations” again. “There is a telephone in my new home,” M. Lépine is reported to have said. “If the Government should want me back, it has only to ring me up.” XVI MADAME LA PRÉSIDENTE, M. GEORGES CLEMENCEAU AND THE UNFORTUNATE M. PAMS There is an important reason for the popularity of M. le Président: there is Madame la Présidente. Less than a month ago Madame Raymond Poincaré, wife of the President of the French Republic, was the hostess, in Paris, of King George and Queen Mary; to-day, as I write, she is helping to entertain, with almost similar brilliancy, their Majesties Christian and Alexandrine of Denmark. In the interval between these two Royal visits, Madame Poincaré has spent a few days on the Riviera, but it wasn’t a holiday. Madame la Présidente was accompanied to the south of France by the most punctilious, the most rigid, the most terrible of all tutors—a high official of the French Protocol. And instead of enjoying the drowsy charms or the worldly delights of the Riviera, it was Madame Poincaré’s duty to master a few elegant phrases from the difficult Danish language; to acquaint herself with the brightest episodes in Danish history; to discern the subtleties and intricacies of Danish etiquette; and incidentally (and always under the respectful but intense eye of the high Protocol official) to discover which kinds of flowers grow in Denmark; what the climate is like; at what hours the Danes rise and retire; and whether they are particularly fond of music, literature, the drama, pictures, sculpture, dancing, needlework, and so on, and so forth.