at carries off the refuse of a
cheap Press.

There are certain rooms in the north wing of the Louvre, in Paris, rooms
having windows facing across the Rue de Rivoli toward the Palais Royal,
where men must have sat in the comfortable leather-covered chair of the
High Official and laughed at the astounding simplicity of the French
people. But he laughs best who laughs last, and the People will
assuredly be amused in a few months, or a few years, at the very sudden
and very humiliating discomfiture of a gentleman falling face-foremost
into the street or hanging forlornly from a lamp-post at the corner
of it. For some have quitted these comfortable chairs, in these quiet
double-windowed rooms overlooking the Rue de Rivoli, for no better fate.

It was in the August of 1850 that a stout gentleman, seated in one of
these comfortable chairs, succumbed so far to the warmth of the palace
corridors as to fall asleep. He was not in the room of a high official,
but in the waiting-room attached to it.

He knew, moreover, that the High Official himself was scarcely likely to
dismiss a previous visitor or a present occupation any the earlier for
being importuned; for he was aware of the official's antecedents, and
knew that a Jack-in-office, who has shouted himself into office, is
nearly always careful to be deaf to other voices than his own.

Moreover, Mr. John Turner was never pressed for time.

"Yes," he had been known to say, "I was in Paris in '48. Never missed a
meal."

Whereas others, with much less at stake than this great banker, had
omitted not only meals, but their night's rest--night after night--in
those stirring times.

John Turner was still asleep when the door leading to the Minister's
room was cautiously opened, showing an inner darkness such as prevails
in an alcove between double doors. The door opened a little wider.
No doubt the peeping eye had made sure that the occupant of the
waiting-room was asleep. On the threshold stood a man of middle height,
who carried himself with a certain grace and quiet dignity. He was pale
almost to sallowness, a broad face with a kind mouth and melancholy
eyes, without any light in them. The melancholy must have been expressed
rather by the lines of the brows than by the eye itself, for this
was without life or expression--the eye of a man who is either very
short-sighted or is engaged in looking through that which he actually
sees, to something he fancies he perceives beyond