s
they got into the drawing-room, "and how you ever managed to get him out
of this scrape."

"Oh, there isn't much to tell," said the Marchesa. "Narcisse was
condemned, indeed, but no one ever believed he would be executed. One of
my oldest friends is married to an official high up in the Ministry of
Justice, and I heard from her last week that Narcisse would certainly
be reprieved; but I never expected a free pardon. Indeed, he got this
entirely because it was discovered that Mademoiselle Sidonie, his
accomplice, was really a Miss Adah Levine, who had graduated at a
music-hall in East London, and that she had announced her intention
of retiring to the land of her birth, and ascending to the apex of her
profession on the strength of her Parisian reputation. Then it was that
the reaction in favour of Narcisse set in; the boulevards could not
stand this. The journals dealt with this new outrage in their best
Fashoda style; the cafes rang with it: another insult cast upon unhappy
France, whose destiny was, it seemed, to weep tears of blood to the end
of time. There were rumours of an interpellation in the Chamber, the
position of the Minister of the Interior was spoken of as precarious,
indeed the Eclaireur reported one evening that he had resigned. Pockets
were picked under the eyes of sergents de ville, who were absorbed in
proclaiming to each other their conviction of the innocence of Narcisse,
and the guilt of cette coquine Anglaise. Cabmen en course ran down
pedestrians by the dozen, as they discussed l'affaire Narcisse to an
accompaniment of whip-cracking. In front of the Cafe des Automobiles a
belated organ-grinder began to grind the air of Mademoiselle Sidonie's
great song Bonjour Coco, whereupon the whole company rose with howls and
cries of, 'A bas les Anglais, a bas les Juifs. 'Conspuez Coco.' In less
than five minutes the organ was disintegrated, and the luckless minstrel
flying with torn trousers down a side street. For the next few days la
haute gomme promenaded with fragments of the piano organ suspended from
watch chains as trophies of victory. But this was not all. Paris broke
out into poetry over l'affaire Narcisse, and here is a journal sent
to me by my friend which contains a poem in forty-nine stanzas by
Aristophane le Beletier, the cher maitre of the 'Moribonds,' the very
newest school of poetry in Paris. I won't inflict the whole of it on
you, but two stanzas I must read--

"'Puisse-je te rappele