Calmly, manfully, smilingly, with courtesy, the little gentleman sustained the assault of the reporters and warded off their indiscreet curiosity. "What did the King say to M. Loubet?" "Gentlemen, the King has told me none of his secrets." "Did he not come for the purpose of completing a treaty of military alliance with us, and is he not to have this evening an important interview with the Minister of Foreign Affairs?" "His Majesty had a very comfortable journey, is in the best of spirits, and appears to be delighted to be in Paris." "But--" "His Majesty brought with him his little griffon dog, and immediately on arriving he asked for port wine and sandwiches." "I beg--" "I may even say that the King will go to hear Sarah Bernhardt this evening, and that at the present moment he is busy with his secretary looking over the voluminous mail which has just arrived from London. In fact--" "Pardon me--is it true that yesterday you arrested some suspected anarchists?" "Anarchists? What are they?" And with these words the little gentleman still smiling turned away, to the discomfiture of the journalists, while certain English and French officers who, full of excitement, were crossing the great court, saluted him with courteous deference. This little gentleman, whom I then saw for the first time, was M. Xavier Paoli. When the time comes for writing the history of the Third French Republic--not its political history, which is already sufficiently well known, but the other, its picturesque, anecdotic, private history, that which must be sought behind the scenes of a government, and shows the little causes which often produced the great effects--when that history comes to be written, it is certain that a long chapter and perhaps the most interesting, will be devoted to M. Paoli.