ng into the broth, and the
peasant's pot will see them no more, as in the good old days of Henry
IV.!'

As for the absurd story that the Boulangist funds come from America, the
only foundation I can find for that seems to be the intimacy, which, I
believe, is no longer as close as it was, between General Boulanger, M.
de Rochefort, and a French nobleman of an ancient historic family, who
has married a very wealthy American wife, and who has long been known to
entertain the most extreme, not to say revolutionary, notions in
politics. The honest Boulangists who really hope to see a good
government established by putting out M. Carnot and putting in General
Boulanger, swell the tide of his supporters, apparently, here as
elsewhere in France, because they blindly hope for everything from him
which their experience forbids them to hope for from the men actually in
power. As one of his most cynical supporters long ago said in Paris, he
is 'the grand common sewer of the disgust of France.'

His popularity with the common soldiers is another element to be counted
with in estimating the strength of this military French Mahdi.

I have struck up a friendship here at Amiens with an excellent woman who
presides over a shop--not one of the _patisseries_ so justly celebrated
by Mr. Ruskin--and who is a very good type of the shrewd, sensible
French '_petite bourgeoise_,' such a woman as, I dare say, Jacqueline
Robins of St.-Omer was in her own time. She has a son in the army, who
is likely soon to be a corporal. '_Dame_, Monsieur,' she said to me, 'if
M. Boulanger is not the best General in France, why did they make him
Minister of War? You do not know what he did for the soldiers! My son
when he gets his stripes is to marry--she is a very nice girl, an only
child, do you know? and her father, who is very solid, will put her in
her own furniture--and more than that! and they will have their own
establishment. They could not have that, you know, but for General
Boulanger, who made the new rule about the wives of the sub-officers.
And they used to shave the soldiers--imagine it!--just like prisoners,
and such beds as they gave them--it was a horror! Well, all that he
changed, and he made the soup fit to eat.'

'The other generals are not very fond of him, you say? _Parbleu!_ that
is likely enough! It is like the _conseillers_ here in the city--one of
them does well, the others always find something to say behind his back!
And that af