stitutions.
Yet, though he has inevitably learned how relative things in general
are, he himself appeals to his friends as unusually self-contained
and absolute. Diplomatist among diplomatists, he is more powerful than
any of them, because he works in the interest of the whole rather than
in that of a part. Loyal absolutely to the "Times," which, to its
accidental honor, has entangled him, the "Times" is, at its best, only
the accidental projection, a kind of chronic double, of himself. His
letters are kind attentions which have the air of a continual
favor. Though better recompensed than favors sometimes are, and
though, whatever their contents, they will be read by everybody,
this is not only because what the author writes is important, but
because he does not write when he has nothing to say.

M. DE BLOWITZ AT HIS SUMMER HOME.

This reticence is superb, and one of its practical results has been
the remarkable physical vigor of this man who is after all no longer
young. One should see him in his country home. M. de Blowitz went up
and down the north coast of France, hunting for an eyry. He found it
on the wooded top of one of the side slopes of the thousand and one
ravines in which fishermen along that coast had fixed their cabins, at
the small hamlet of _Les Petites Dalles_. Like Alphonse Karr at
Etretat, he made the fame of this spot. Your guide-book will tell you
the fact. "M. de Blowitz, correspondent of the English newspaper the
'Times,' has a villa here." I defy you to find any other distinction
special to this place. The high Normandy coast is always charming, but
it is equally so at a hundred other points. And of what charm there is
here simply as village, M. Blowitz's presence would seem to threaten
the partial extinction. For this very presence is rendering the spot
famous and crowded. Sit in the afternoon listening to the three
violins that provide the music, and, taking your absinthe on one of
those hard benches within the narrow limits of the space there called
Casino, you will run the risk of overhearing a conversation like
this:

"This is your first summer here?"

"Yes, came last night. I am tired of Pau, and thought I could bury
myself here. But there's too much world."

"Yes, but what a world it is!"

"Oh, I don't mind that! They say there's enough society in the villas.
Since de Blowitz built the _Lampottes_ and has brought his friends
down, there are some people _tres bien de la meilleure