chman, and cannot help being frivolous."

"You rebuke my presumption too gently. True, I ought not to intrude
political subjects on one like you--I understand so little about
them--but this is my excuse, I do so desire to know more."

M. de Mauleon paused, and looked at her earnestly with a kindly, half
compassionate look, wholly free from the impertinence of gallantry.
"Young poetess," he said, softly, "you care for politics. Happy, indeed,
is he--and whether he succeed or fail in his ambition abroad, proud
should he be of an ambition crowned at home--he who has made you desire
to know more of politics!"

The girl felt the blood surge to her temples. How could she have been so
self-confessed? She made no reply, nor did M. de Mauleon seem to expect
one; with that rare delicacy of high breeding which appears in France
to belong to a former generation, he changed his tone, and went on as if
there had been no interruption to the question her words implied.

"You think the Empire secure--that it is menaced by on earthquake? You
deceive yourself. The Emperor began with a fatal mistake, but a mistake
it needs many years to discover. He disdained the slow natural process
of adjustment between demand and supply--employer and workmen. He
desired--no ignoble ambition--to make Paris the wonder of the world,
the eternal monument of his reign. In so doing, he sought to create
artificial modes of content for revolutionary workmen. Never has any
ruler had such tender heed of manual labour to the disparagement of
intellectual culture. Paris is embellished; Paris is the wonder of the
world; other great towns have followed its example; they, too, have
their rows of palaces and temples. Well, the time comes when the
magician can no longer give work to the spirits he raises; then they
must fall on him and rend: out of the very houses he built for the
better habitation of workmen will flock the malcontents who cry, 'Down
with the Empire!' On the 21st of May you witnessed the pompous ceremony
which announces to the Empire a vast majority of votes, that will be
utterly useless to it except as food for gunpowder in the times that are
at hand. Seven days before, on the 14th of May, there was a riot in the
Faubourg d'Temple--easily put down--you scarcely hear of it. That riot
was not the less necessary to those who would warn the Empire that it is
mortal. True, the riot disperses--but it is unpunished; riot unpunished
is a revolution begun. T