house, so
that a servant had to go mysteriously to the post-office to get them, and
as soon as he entered they would be hidden under sofa cushions; he
arranged everything to suit himself--always charming, always
good-natured, a jovial and all-powerful tyrant.

Other friends were expected, pious and conservative friends. The unhappy
couple saw the impossibility of having them there then, and, not knowing
what to do, one evening they announced to Joseph Mouradour that they
would be obliged to absent themselves for a few days, on business, and
they begged him to stay on alone. He did not appear disturbed, and
answered:

"Very well, I don't mind! I will wait here as long as you wish. I have
already said that there should be no formality between friends. You are
perfectly right-go ahead and attend to your business. It will not offend
me in the least; quite the contrary, it will make me feel much more
completely one of the family. Go ahead, my friends, I will wait for you!"

Monsieur and Madame de Meroul left the following day.

He is still waiting for them.

THE EFFEMINATES

How often we hear people say, "He is charming, that man, but he is a
girl, a regular girl." They are alluding to the effeminates, the bane of
our land.

For we are all girl-like men in France--that is, fickle, fanciful,
innocently treacherous, without consistency in our convictions or our
will, violent and weak as women are.

But the most irritating of girl--men is assuredly the Parisian and
the boulevardier, in whom the appearance of intelligence is more marked
and who combines in himself all the attractions and all the faults of
those charming creatures in an exaggerated degree in virtue of his
masculine temperament.

Our Chamber of Deputies is full of girl-men. They form the greater number
of the amiable opportunists whom one might call "The Charmers." These are
they who control by soft words and deceitful promises, who know how to
shake hands in such a manner as to win hearts, how to say "My dear
friend" in a certain tactful way to people he knows the least, to change
his mind without suspecting it, to be carried away by each new idea, to
be sincere in their weathercock convictions, to let themselves be
deceived as they deceive others, to forget the next morning what he
affirmed the day before.

The newspapers are full of these effeminate men. That is probably where
one finds the most, but it is also where they are most needed. Th