ven to transact
the business of a benefit society without giving notice of our design to
the police, and receiving into our party at least two of its agents as
lookers-on. The result has been the decay of all such societies, and the
extinction of most of them. Where they remain, the average monthly
subscription is fifteen-pence, which insures the payment of twenty-pence
a day during sickness, with gratuitous advice and medicine from the
doctor. The funds of such societies are lodged either in savings' banks,
or in the _Mont de Piete_; which, though properly a pawnbroking
establishment, has also its uses as a bank. The imperial fist presses
everywhere down upon us. It has forced us out of sick clubs, because we
sometimes talked in them about the state of the nation: it would build us
huge barracks to live in, so that we may be had continually under watch
and ward; and it has lately thrust in upon us a president of its own at
the head of our _Conseil de Prud'hommes_, the only tribunal we possess
for the adjustment of our internal trade disputes.

Of our pleasures on a Sunday afternoon the world has heard. We devote
that to our families, if we have any; Monday, too often, to our friends.
There are on Sundays our feats of gymnastics at open-air balls beyond the
barriers, and our dancing saloons in the city; such as the Prado, the Bal
Montesquieu, and the Dogs' Ball. There are our pleasant country rambles,
and our pleasant little dinners in the fields. There are our games at
poule, and dominoes, and piquet; and our pipes with dexterously blackened
bowls. There are our theatres, the Funambule and the Porte St. Martin.
Gamblers among us play at bowls in the Elysian fields, or they stay at
home losing and winning more than they can properly afford to risk at
_ecarte_.

Then there are our holidays. The best used to be "the three days of
July," but they were lost in the last scramble. Yet we still have no
lack of holiday amusement; our puppets to admire, and greasy poles to
climb for prizes by men who have been prudently required first to declare
and register their ambition at the Bureau of Police. Government so gets
something like a list of the men who aspire; who wish to mount. It must
be very useful. There are our water tournaments at St. Cloud and at
Boulogne-sur-Seine; where they who have informed the police of their
combative propensities, may thrust at each other with long-padded poles
from boats which are b