race-cards stuck in their hats around which green veils were twisted, wonderfully like the characters in lilliputian pantomimes whose comicality consists solely in the size of their heads compared with their short legs and dwarfish movements. They smoked and drank outrageously. Sometimes the man in the fez, himself hardly able to stand, brought them home horribly ill. And yet Jansoulet loved his little ones, especially the youngest, who, with his long hair and his doll-like aspect, reminded him of little Afchin in her carriage. But they were still at the age when children belong to the mother, when neither a stylish tailor nor accomplished masters nor a fashionable boarding-school nor the ponies saddled for the little men in the stable, when nothing in short takes the place of the watchful and attentive hand, the warmth and gayety of the nest. The father was unable to give them that in any event; and then he was so busy! A thousand matters, the _Caisse Territoriale_, the arrangement of the picture gallery, races at Tattersall's with Bois-l'Hery, some gimcrack to go and see, here or there, at the houses of collectors to whom Schwalbach recommended him, hours passed with trainers, jockeys, dealers in curiosities, the occupied, varied existence of a bourgeois gentleman in modern Paris. In all this going and coming he succeeded in Parisianizing himself a little more each day, was admitted to Monpavon's club, made welcome in the green-room at the ballet, behind the scenes at the theatre, and continued to preside at his famous bachelor breakfasts, the only entertainments possible in his establishment. His existence was really very full, and yet de Gery relieved him from the most difficult part of it, the complicated department of solicitations and contributions.