t) to interfere with and
frustrate the plans of the government. Only last year they seized an
opportunity at the funerals of the Duchesse d'Alencon and the Duc
d'Aumale to make a royalist manifestation of the most pronounced
character. The young Duchesse d'Orleans was publicly spoken of and
treated as the "Queen of France;" at the private receptions given during
her stay in Paris the same ceremonial was observed as if she had been
really on the throne. The young Duke, her husband, was not present,
being in exile as a pretender, but armorial bearings of the "reigning
family," as their followers insist on calling them, were hung around the
Madeleine and on the funeral-cars of both the illustrious dead.

The government is singularly lenient to the aristocrats. If a poor man
cries "Long live the Commune!" in the street, he is arrested. The
police, however, stood quietly by and let a group of the old nobility
shout "Long live the Queen!" as the train containing the young Duchesse
d'Orleans moved out of the station. The secret of this leniency toward
the "pretenders" to the throne, is that they are very little feared. If
it amuses a set of wealthy people to play at holding a court, the strong
government of the republic cares not one jot. The Orleans family have
never been popular in France, and the young pretender's marriage to an
Austrian Archduchess last year has not improved matters.

It is the fashion in the conservative Faubourg St. Germain, to ridicule
the President, his wife and their bourgeois surroundings, as forty years
ago the parents of these aristocrats affected to despise the imperial
_parvenus_. The swells amused themselves during the official visit of
the Emperor and Empress of Russia last year (which was gall and wormwood
to them) by exaggerating and repeating all the small slips in etiquette
that the President, an intelligent, but simple-mannered gentleman, was
supposed to have made during the sojourn of his imperial guests.

Both M. and Mme. Faure are extremely popular with the people, and are
heartily cheered whenever they are seen in public. The President is the
despair of the lovers of routine and etiquette, walking in and out of his
Palais of the Elysee, like a private individual, and breaking all rules
and regulations. He is fond of riding, and jogs off to the Bois of a
morning with no escort, and often of an evening drops in at the theatres
in a casual way. The other night at the Francais