plished specimen of the job-editor. As firmly convinced of
the supremacy of the Articles of War as the best disciplined private
soldier who ever showed how perfect an automaton man may become by
thorough discipline, his political opinions are something more than a
creed: they are a watchword which be observes with a most supple
obstinacy. The cabinet-minister he calls master is a corporal who has
the right to think for him; and were the corporal to contradict himself
ten times in the course of a single day, imperturbable little Paulin
Limayrac would demonstrate to him that he was ten times in the right.
But then (that is, in 1855) Monsieur Paulin Limayrac was a Republican, a
Socialist; and his weakness lay in imagining not only that people read
his articles in "La Presse," but that they remembered them for a whole
sennight after reading them. When you met him, he always commenced
conversation:--

"Ah, ha! what did I tell you? Am I not an excellent prophet? You
remember the prophecy I made the other day? It has come to pass just as
I predicted it!"

Poor Paulin Limayrac really thought himself a prophet, when in good
truth he was not even a conjurer. Stiffening himself up on his stumpy
legs, he stared as hard as he could through his eye-glass, and from his
giant's height of four feet ten, at everybody who pretended to believe
there was a God in heaven. His occupation just at that time was to toss
the incense-burning censer in honor of Madame, Emile de Girardin under
her aquiline nose. He had become the page, the groom, the dwarf of this
celebrated woman, who had, alas! only a few months more to live. He
opened the fire against me. To gratify Madame Emile de Girardin, he one
day wrote on the corner of her table twenty harsh lines against me, (he
took good care not to sign them,) in which he said of me exactly the
contrary of what he had written to me. As these lines were anonymous, I
did not care to pretend to recognize the author; besides, can you feel
anger towards such a whipper-snapper? I met him a short time afterwards,
and he gave me a more cordial shake-hands than ever. Now comes the cream
of the fellow's conduct: for all this that I have mentioned is as
nothing, so common of occurrence is it in Paris. Note that Madame Emile
de Girardin was dying: I was ignorant of it, but Monsieur Paulin
Limayrac knew it well. Note further, that for weeks before this he had
celebrated in the tenderest sentimental strains the lovin