titude one who most assuredly was not his hero's "assiduous
guest," but simply, in their infrequent meetings, an inquisitive
acquaintance on whose mind the truth is quickly photographed, and who
can never efface from his memory the images that are once imprinted
thereon?

I knew the "real Nabob" in 1864. I occupied at that time a
semi-official position which forced me to exhibit great reserve in my
visits to that luxurious and hospitable Levantine. Later I was
intimately associated with one of his brothers; but at that time the
poor Nabob was far away, struggling through thickets of cruel brambles,
and he was seen at Paris only occasionally. Moreover, it is very
unpleasant for a courteous man to reckon thus with the dead, and to
say: "You are mistaken. Although he was an agreeable host, I was not
often seen at his table." Let it suffice therefore, for me to declare
that, in speaking of Mere Francoise's son as I have done, it has been
my purpose to represent him in a favorable light, and that the charge
of ingratitude seems to me an absurdity from every standpoint. That
this is true is proved by the fact that many people consider the
portrait too flattering, more interesting than nature. To such people
my reply is very simple: "Jansoulet strikes me as an excellent fellow;
but at all events, if I am wrong, you can blame the newspapers for
telling you his real name. I gave you my novel as a novel, good or bad,
without any guaranty of resemblances."

As to Mora, that is another matter. Something has been said of
indiscretion, of political defection. Great Heaven! I have never made a
secret of it. At the age of twenty, I was connected with the office of
the high functionary who has served as my model; and my friends of
those days know what a serious political personage I made. The
Department also must have strange recollections of that eccentric clerk
with the Merovingian beard, who was always the last to arrive and the
first to depart, and who never went up to the duke's private office
except to ask leave of absence; of a naturally independent character,
too, with hands unstained by anything like sycophancy, and so little
reconciled to the Empire that, on the day when the duke proposed to him
to enter his service, the future attache deemed it his duty to declare
with touching juvenile solemnity that "he was a Legitimist."

"So is the Empress," was His Excellency's reply, and he smiled with
calm and impertinent condescens