mademoiselle," he said. "Their newspapers here
are as stale as their bread. You can keep it
as long as you like, and give it to the poor when
you have done with it. For, if the Gazette des
Tribunaux doesn't concern the poor, I don't
know what does. I have the honour, mademoiselle,
to wish you a very good morning."

With which mild witticism the baker bowed,
touched the brim of the monstrous hat—he could
not for the life of him get it off—and took his
departure. He repaired to an adjacent salon
de toilette, to be shaved, and, if he could only
have got that hat off, he would probably, it
being a jour de fête, have had his hair curled.

Lily was not frightened at the baker, although
he was at least two inches taller than the man
in the fluffy white hat who had leered at her in
the Rue Montmartre. She was too sick at heart
to smile when he offered her the paper; but
she murmured out her thanks, and, persuading
herself that it was still very early, and, eager
to stave off her business yet for a few minutes
longer, she began to read the Gazette des
Tribunaux.

She had never set eyes on that famous journal
before, and its contents, at first, absolutely
horrified her. How wicked everybody in Paris
must be to be sure! The eight pages of
ill-printed matter were crimson with crimes. One-
half of the world seemed to be prisoners;
and the other half, judges, gendarmes, and
executioners. Here was a viscount in the
Charente-Inférieure who had poisoned his mother-
in-law. A soldier in the garrison of Oran had
struck his commanding officer, and was to be
shot by sentence of court-martial. Dreadful
vol avec effraction in the Avenue de Bondy!
Sad case of juvenile depravity at Valery-sur-
Somme! Awful conflagration at Brives-la-
Gaillarde! Murder of three children by their mother
at Noisy-le-Sec! An infant devoured by a wolf
at Vitry-le-Français! Six men drowned at
Meaux-en-Brie! An old gentleman aged eighty
run over on the Boulevard Beaumarchais, and
killed on the spot! Inundations, ravages of
small-pox, poisonings of whole families through
eating ragout of mutton with mushrooms, steamboat
explosions, breaking down of suspension-
bridges, all over the country! The news from
abroad seemed as terrific as the domestic
intelligence. They were hanging right and left in
England. Everybody in Russia, who had not
had the knout, appeared to be on his way to
Siberia. The sufferings of the Poles were fearful.
The garotte was as busy as a bee in Spain; a
new guillotine had just been imported to the
island of Sardinia; three Chinese mandarins, and
wearers of the blue button, had been chopped
into ten thousand pieces by order of the Emperor
of China, while their wives had been glued
between two-inch boards, and sawed in halves,
longitudinally. Lily did not know that, when
the editor of the Gazette des Tribunaux was
short of foreign intelligence, he invented, or
served up afresh so much of old news as would
suit his purpose, or the somewhat blasé appetite
of his readers.

She was about laying down the sheet over
which, in mingled horror and uneasy curiosity
she had spent some twenty minutes, when a
paragraph at the foot of the Chronique, or
collection of minor Parisian notes, caught her eye.
It ran thus:

"UN ANGLAIS À LA MORGUE. The identity
of the body found days since in the Filet de St.
Cloud, and in due course transferred to the
Morgue, has been established. Affirmation has
been made before the commissary of police of
the section of the Hôtel-Dieu, by the Sieur Jean
Baptiste Constant, native of Berne (Suisse),
proprietor, domiciled at Paris, that the corpse is
that of Sir Francis Blunt, Esquire, gentilhomme
Anglais, to whose person he was formerly
attached in the capacity of valet-de-chambre. This
statement has been confirmed by the evidence
of the Sieur Rataplan, restaurateur, of the
quarter of the Madeleine; and papers found in
the vestments of the defunct place the truth of
their story beyond a doubt. What could have
led Sir Blunt to this desperate act—a deliberate
suicide being inferred by the authorities—is
uncertain; but it appears that he was known as a
constant frequenter of the Salons Frascati, and
losses at the gaming-table may have been the
primary cause of this sad catastrophe (triste
événement). Milord Blunt had formerly been
rich to millions, but of late had become much
reduced in circumstances. With touching
solicitude M. Jean Baptiste Constant has charged
himself with the interment of the remains
(dépouilles mortelles) of this unfortunate son of
Albion."

Lily read this paragraph through, read it
again and again, and fell into a dream. The
names recorded were unfamiliar to her. She
knew nothing of proprietors who were natives
of Berne in Switzerland and were domiciled
at Paris, of restaurateurs who lived in the
quarter of the Madeleine. Sir Francis Blunt,
with that thundering addition of "esquire,"
who was he? And yet—Jean Baptiste
Constant, Rataplan, Blunt,—Rataplan, Blunt,
Constant—had she or had she not ever heard
those names before? She passed all the simple
and sorry incidents in her life in review before
her. She strove to remember every place where
she had been, every one whom she had known—
there were the Bunnycastles: the three sisters,
the old lady, with her sentimental wool-gathering
talk, the servants, the discreet apothecary, her
prattling, ever complaining schoolmates. Then
up came a vision of a gentleman in a cloak, who
had spoken to her lazily, but sharply; and a vision
of another gentleman, with a glossy black whisker
on his cheek, who had held her in his arms, not
unkindly. Again started up the image of the
fierce, and imperious lady, with her temper, her
stampings, her frettings, and her scoldings.
To her succeeded Cutwig and Co., the cheery
foreman, the demure Miss Eldred, the large-
mouthed clerk who grinned and ate apples.
Was it at the Greenwich dinner she had heard
the name of Blunt, or on board the steamer,
when the gentleman with the heavy whiskers