ecially when
he is a married man, whose wife does not willingly submit to have her
home stripped of its art-treasures. The tragedienne came in a hackney
cab; the comte offered to send her back in his carriage. She struck the
iron while it was hot. "Yes, that will do admirably; there will be no
fear of my being robbed of your present, which I had better take with
me." "Perfectly, mademoiselle," replied the comte; "but you will send me
back my carriage, won't you?"

Dr. Veron was despoiled with even less ceremony. Having taken a fancy to
some silver saucers or cups in which the proprietor of the
_Constitutionnel_ offered ices to his visitors, she began by pocketing
one, and never rested until she had the whole of the set. In short,
everything was fish to her net. She made her friends give her bibelots
and knickknacks of no particular value, to which she attached some
particular legend--absolute inventions for the greatest part--in order
to sell them for a thousand times their original cost. One day she
noticed a guitar at the studio of one of her familiars. "Give me that
guitar; people will think it is the one with which I earned my living on
the Place Royale and on the Place de la Bastille." And as such it was
sold by her to M. Achille Fould for a thousand louis. The great
financier nearly fell into a fit when the truth was told to him at
Rachel's death; he, in his turn, having wanted to "do a bit of
business." In this instance no Christian suffered, because buyer and
vendor belonged to the same race. Of course the panegyrists of Rachel,
when the story came to their ears, maintained that the thousand louis
were employed for some charitable purpose, without, however, revealing
the particular quarter whither they went; but those who judged Rachel
dispassionately could not even aver that her charity began at home,
because, though she never ceased complaining of her brother's and her
sisters' extravagance, both brother and sisters could have told very
curious tales about the difficulty of making her loosen her
purse-strings for even the smallest sums. As for Rachel's doing good by
stealth and blushing to find it fame, it was all so much fudge. Contrary
to the majority of her fellow-professionals, in the past as well as the
present, she even grudged her services for a concert or a performance in
aid of a deserving object, although she was not above swelling her own
hoard by such entertainments.

The following instance, for