his calendar, at
least when he is spending the money of the French taxpayers on his
guests.

If I may believe what I afterwards heard in more than one provincial
town, these worthy mayors (every one of whom, let me observe, exercises
a direct personal and official authority over the elections) carried
back to his astonished and envious fellow-citizens tales of Arabian,
Tunisian, Algerian, and Annamite nights at the Exposition, and on the
Champs-Elysees, to which no pen but that of Diderot or of the younger
Crebillon could do adequate justice. 'I do not believe the Sultan,' said
a clever and amusing lady to me at Toulouse, 'threw open the doors of
Paradise so wide to the German Kaiser, at Constantinople, as did our
more than liberal M. Constans to the married Mayors of France at Paris!'

On the other hand, at Honfleur, in the Calvados, it came to my knowledge
that the local authorities, on the morning of the first Legislative
Elections, brought over from another port on the Norman coast, a number
of sailors, residents of Honfleur, and entitled to vote there, but
absent in the pursuit of their calling. These honest Jack Tars came to
Honfleur by the railway, in a kind of brigade, accompanied by a
Government agent, who marched them up to the polls, and, having seen
their votes safely deposited for the Government candidate, gave each man
his return ticket for the next day, and set them all free to spend the
interval in the bosom of their astonished and, I hope, delighted
families.

From the point of view of the domestic peace of France, this proceeding
was perhaps less reprehensible than the Belshazzar's Feast of M.
Constans and the thirteen thousand mayors. But from the point of view of
the relations between the Third Republic and the deliberate independent
electoral will of France, I think it must be admitted that they are, as
the people say in the Western States of America, 'very much of a
muchness!'

I ought to add that in France the mayors of the chief towns (or
_chefs-lieux_), the arrondissements, and the cantons are nominated by
the Government at Paris. The mayors of the communes which owe their
corporate freedom to the monarchy are elected, but the Third Republic
has taken from them the control of their local taxation for purposes of
the highest local interest. I should say also that all the sailors in
France are obliged to be inscribed upon lists kept and controlled by the
maritime prefects for the Ministry of