replied, 'I have brought disgrace enough upon it already,' and, seizing the penknife, thrust it into his heart, and fell dead. He was the descendant of a noble house in one of the southern provinces, and came to Paris as a medical student, and, through a devoted attachment to his mistress, whose costly tastes soon drained his purse, was induced to steal the trunks of travelers as they left the railway stations at night. In his apartment was found a large wardrobe; and a month's purloining was thus summarily expiated. Similar incidents occur elsewhere, but the details, when the scene is laid in Paris, are more picturesque and dramatic. Two instances which I heard related will illustrate this same dramatic significance in the municipal system. After an _émeute_, the _chef_ of police in a certain _arrondissement_, while engaged in superintending the removal of corpses from a barricade, noticed the body of a female whose delicate hands and finely-wrought robe were so alien to the scene as to excite suspicion. He ordered it to be placed in a separate apartment for examination. A more careful inspection confirmed his surmise that this was the body of no amazonian whose warlike zeal or accidental presence in such an affray could explain its discovery. There was no trace whereby the remains could be identified except a geranium leaf that was found imbedded in her long and disheveled tresses. This was given to a celebrated botanist, with orders to learn, if possible, from what plant it had been taken. The man of science visited all the houses of the neighborhood, and critically examined every specimen of the shrub he could find. At length, in the elegant library of a young abbé, he not only discovered one of the species, but, by means of a powerful microscope, detected the very branch whence the leaf had been nipped. By dexterous management the _chef_, thus scientifically put on the track, brought home the charge to the priest, who confessed the murder of the young lady in a fit of jealousy, and, by depositing her body, at night, amid the dead of humbler lineage, who had fallen in the revolutionary strife, thought to conceal all knowledge of his crime.