uch; I should not be surprised if she gave her a great deal of
trouble in future years."

It would be difficult to mark the precise moment in our contemporary
habits and customs when a new species of religion, which might be called
child-idolatry, appeared. Nor shall we find it easier to discover by
what species of influence this worship has reached its present enormous
development among us. But, although unexplained, the fact exists and
ought to be recorded by every faithful historian of the great and the
little movements of society. In the family of to-day children have taken
the place of the household gods of the ancients, and whoever does not
share this worship is not a morose and sour spirit, nor a captious and
annoying reasoner,--he is simply an atheist.

Try to amuse one of these beloved adored ones, all puffed up, as they
naturally are, by a sense of their importance, with dolls and toys
and Punch-and-Judys, as in the days of our unsophisticated innocence!
Nonsense! Boys must have ponies and cigarettes, and the reading of
novelettes; and girls, the delight of playing hostess, giving afternoon
dances, and evening parties at which the real Guignol of the Champs
Elysees and Robert Houdin appear,--the entertainment being announced
on the invitation cards. Sometimes, as now in the case of Nais de
l'Estorade, these little sovereigns obtain permission to give a ball in
_grown-up_ style,--so much so, that policemen are stationed about the
doors, and Delisle, Nattier, and Prevost provide the toilets and the
decorations.

With the character we have already seen in Nais, it may be said that no
one was better fitted than she for the duties that devolved upon her
by the abdication of her mother. This abdication took place before the
evening of the ball itself, for it was Mademoiselle Nais de l'Estorade
who, in her own name, invited her guests to do her the honor to pass
the evening _chez elle_; and as Madame de l'Estorade would not allow the
parody to go as far as printed cards, Nais spent several days
writing her notes of invitation, taking care to put in the corner, in
conspicuous letters, the sacramental word, "Dancing."

Nothing could be more curious, or, as Madame de Camps might have said,
more alarming, than the self-possession of this little girl of fourteen,
behaving precisely as she had seen her mother do on like occasions;
stationed, to receive her company, at the door of the salon, and marking
by her manner th