ng the wall at Versailles after a dinner to the Shah of Persia,
he outwitted every journalist in the palace garden, and, as he says,
"made five enemies in a single well-employed evening." No, even the
most ubiquitous of American reporters would admit that he may be
practical enough when need be. But after all, and above all, he is an
idealist, marked by a distinguished imagination and an amiable and
generous sympathy. No journalistic tag is on him. He is simply a
gentleman with the widest interests and uncommon capacities who
succeeded in convincing the "Times" (this, of itself, is surely by way
of being a _vrai coup de maitre_), and then every other intelligent
observer, of his power and usefulness. He has his own philanthropic
ends, for the propagation of which it pleases him to have so esteemed
a medium as the "Times."

IN HIS PARIS HOME.

The people who come to see him--the deputies, the ministers, the
ambassadors, the writers, the artists, the simple _gens du monde_--come
more often not to his office, but to his warm and hospitable home.
Here, in one of the streets that wind about the Star Arch at the head
of the Champs Elysees, he receives all the world, rather as the
charming gentleman than the historic journalist de Blowitz. The
centre--I must add the admired centre--of a devoted family circle, he
discourses at his dinner-table of the serious events of the day,
volubly, picturesquely, and with conviction. Yet he is always ready to
listen, and even to alter his opinions at a moment's notice, though
that notice must be good. While he himself makes the coffee, the talk
becomes less exacting and more general. Often he tells you of his
pictures, and points out to you the panels set into the wall of the
room, works of his friends, great canvases by M. Clairin or Mme. Sarah
Bernhardt; and one, a sunny view of the Norman house on the cliff, by
M. Duphot. After dinner in the private study, with its high walls
covered with paintings and souvenirs and autograph photographs of the
greatest names of France, you smoke in the arms of your easy-chair,
the wood fire burning brightly in an ample chimney; while your host,
propped by divan cushions, and with one leg curled under him, drops
grandly into pleasant reminiscences. One has visions of Bagdad. After
an hour like this, you wonder when M. de Blowitz works. But he has been
working all the time. He has been thinking in one half of a very
capacious brain and talking from an