to her husband, while he
sank down into an arm-chair to finish reading the Intransigeant.

The couple, through delicacy, made a pretense of reading a little, they
then handed him back the Republican sheets, which they handled gingerly,
as though they might be poisoned.

He laughed and declared:

"One week of this regime and I will have you converted to my ideas."

In truth, at the end of a week he ruled the house. He had closed the
door against the priest, whom Madame de Meroul had to visit secretly; he
had forbidden the Gaulois and the Clarion to be brought into the house,
so that a servant had to go mysteriously to the post-office to get them,
and as soon as he entered they would be hidden under sofa cushions;
he arranged everything to suit himself--always charming, always
good-natured, a jovial and all-powerful tyrant.

Other friends were expected, pious and conservative friends. The unhappy
couple saw the impossibility of having them there then, and, not knowing
what to do, one evening they announced to Joseph Mouradour that they
would be obliged to absent themselves for a few days, on business,
and they begged him to stay on alone. He did not appear disturbed, and
answered:

"Very well, I don't mind! I will wait here as long as you wish. I have
already said that there should be no formality between friends. You are
perfectly right-go ahead and attend to your business. It will not offend
me in the least; quite the contrary, it will make me feel much more
completely one of the family. Go ahead, my friends, I will wait for
you!"

Monsieur and Madame de Meroul left the following day.

He is still waiting for them.

THE EFFEMINATES

How often we hear people say, "He is charming, that man, but he is a
girl, a regular girl." They are alluding to the effeminates, the bane of
our land.

For we are all girl-like men in France--that is, fickle, fanciful,
innocently treacherous, without consistency in our convictions or our
will, violent and weak as women are.

But the most irritating of girl--men is assuredly the Parisian and the
boulevardier, in whom the appearance of intelligence is more marked and
who combines in himself all the attractions and all the faults of those
charming creatures in an exaggerated degree in virtue of his masculine
temperament.

Our Chamber of Deputies is full of girl-men. They form the greater
number of the amiable opportunists whom one might call "The Charmers."
These are th