As a rule, you are none the worse and the world is none the better; we know all about you already--all, at least, that we want to know; we have heard it all before, over and over again. But a poor fellow-creature has earned his crust, and goes home the happier for having talked to you about yourself and been treated like a man and a brother. But sometimes the reviewer is very terrible indeed in his jaunty vulgarization of your distinguished personality, and you have to wince and redden, and rue the day you let him inside your house, and live down those light familiar paragraphs in which he describes you and the way you dress and how you look and what jolly things you say; and on what free and easy terms _he_ is with you, of all people in the world! But the most terrible of all is the pleasant gentleman from America, who has yearned to know you for _so_ many years, and comes perhaps with a letter of introduction--or even without!--not to interview you or write about you (good heavens! he hates and scorns that modern pest, the interviewer), but to sit at your feet and worship at your shrine, and tell you of all the good you have done him and his, all the happiness you have given them all--"the debt of a lifetime!" And you let yourself go before him, and so do your family, and so do your old friends; is _he_ not also a friend, though not an old one? You part with him almost in sorrow, he's so nice! And in three weeks some kind person sends you from the other side such a printed account of you and yours--so abominably true, so abominably false--that the remembrance of it makes you wake up in the dead of night, and most unjustly loathe an entire continent for breeding and harboring such a shameless type of press reptile! I feel hard-hearted towards the interviewer, I own. I wish him, and those who employ him, a better trade; and a better taste to whoever reads what he writes. But Barty could be hard-hearted to nobody, and always regretted having granted the interview when he saw the published outcome of it. Fortunately, M. Paroly was decently discreet. "I've got a Frenchman coming this afternoon--a tremendous swell," said Barty, at lunch. * * * * * _Leah._ "Who is he?" _Barty._ "M. Paroly, of the _Débats_." _Leah._ "What is he when he's at home?" _Barty._ "A famous journalist; as you'd know if you'd read the French newspapers sometimes, which you never do." _Leah._ "Haven't got the time. He's coming to interview you, I suppose, and make French newspaper copy out of you." _Barty._ "Why shouldn't he come just for the pleasure of making my acquaintance?" _Leah._ "And mine--I'll be there and talk to him, too!" _Barty._ "My dear, he probably doesn't speak a word of English; and your French, you know! You never _would_ learn French properly, although you've had me to practise on for so many years--not to mention Bob and Ida."