s Godiva; for, curious to
relate, the devotion of the wife of Leofric of Murcia was a favourite
subject with the Childebertians. As a matter of course, the applicants
were in the costume, or rather lack of costume, appropriate to the
character. The strait-laced bourgeois or bourgeoise was shocked, and did
not repeat the visit. The cry that there was a mad dog in the house was
a common one on those occasions; and at last the would-be
portrait-painters had to give in, and a big placard appeared on the
frontispiece: "Le commerce des portraits a ete cede aux directeur et
membres de l'Ecole des Beaux-Arts."

The most curious thing in connection with the "Childebert" was that,
though the place was inexpressibly ill kept, it escaped the most
terrible visitations of the cholera. I prefer not to enter into details
of the absolute disregard of all sanitary conditions, but in warm
weather the building became positively uninhabitable. Long before the
unsavoury spectacle of "learned fleas" became a feature of the suburban
fairs, Emile Signol, who is best known as a painter of religious
subjects, had trained a company of performers of a different kind of
nocturnal pests. He averred in his opening lecture that their ingenuity
was too great to remain unknown, and cited anecdotes fully proving his
words. Certain is it that they were the only enemies before which the
combined forces of the Childebertians proved powerless. But even under
such trying circumstances the latter never lost their buoyant spirits,
and their retreats _en masse_ were effected in a manner the reports of
which set the whole of Paris in a roar. One Sunday morning, the faithful
worshippers, going to matins at the Church of St. Germain-des-Pres,
found the square occupied by a troop of Bedouins, wrapt in their
burnouses, and sleeping the sleep of the just. Some had squatted in
corners, calmly smoking their _chibouks_. This was in the days of the
Algerian campaign, and the rumour spread like wildfire that a party of
Arab prisoners of war were bivouacked round the church, where a special
service would be given in the afternoon as the first step to their
conversion to Christianity. It being Sunday, the whole of Paris rushed
to the spot. The Bedouins had, however, disappeared, but a collection
was made in their behalf by several demure-looking young men. The
Parisians gave liberally. That night, and two or three nights after, the
nocturnal pests' occupation was gone, for th