s longtemps si le tort
n'etait d'un cote."

Monsieur Alphonse Giraud, unlike many men, had an aim in life--a daily
purpose with which he rose in the morning at, it must be admitted, a
shockingly late hour--without which he rarely sought his couch even
when it was not reached until the foolish birds were astir.

The son of the celebrated Baron Giraud sought, in a word, to be
mistaken for an Englishman--and what higher ambition could we, who
modestly set such store upon our nationality, desire him to cherish?

In view of this praiseworthy object, Alphonse Giraud wore a mustache
only, and this--oh! inconsistency of great minds--he laboriously
twirled heavenwards in the French fashion. It was, in fact, the
guileless Alphonse's chief tribulation that, however industriously he
cultivated that devil-may-care upward sweep, the sparse ornament to
his upper lip invariably drooped downwards again before long. In the
sunny land of France it is held that the mustache worn "en croc" not
only confers upon its possessor an air of distinction, but renders
that happy individual particularly irresistible in the eyes of the
fair. Readers of modern French fiction are aware that the heroes of
those edifying tales invariably wear the mustache "hardiment
retroussee," which habit doubtless adds a subtle charm to their
singularly puerile and fatuous conversation imperceptible to the mere
reader.

Alphonse Giraud was a small man, and would have given a thousand
pounds for another inch, as he frankly told his friends. His outward
garments were fashioned in London, whence also came his hats, gloves
and boots. But within all these he was hopelessly and absolutely
French. The English boots trod the pavement--they knew no other path
in life--in a manner essentially Gallic. The check trousers, of a
pattern somewhat loud and startling, had the mincing gait in them of
any "pantalon de fantasie," purchased a prix fixe in the Boulevard St.
Germain, across the water. It is useless to lift a Lincoln and Bennett
from a little flat-topped head, cut, as they say, to the rat and
fringed all over with black, upright hair.

But young Giraud held manfully to his purpose, and even essayed to
copy the attitudes of his own groom, a thin-legged man from Streatham,
who knew a thing or two, let him tell you, about a 'oss. There was no
harm in Alphonse. There is, indeed, less harm in Frenchmen than
they--sad dogs!--would have you believe. They are, as a rule,