ou think that a remarkable case!' said the Picard friend to whom I
mentioned it. 'It is an everyday affair. Wait a minute! Let me show you
the documents in regard to a performance of our worthy mayor and
senator, which throws President Carnot into the shade. They are as
amusing, too, as they are instructive, and I will give you copies of
them which you may use as you like. You tell me people in England and
America have no idea of what is going on in France? I assure you that
people in France who know what is going on around them, have no idea of
what it all means, or of what it must lead to in the end.

'Sometimes I think we were so stunned as a nation by the invasion and
the Commune that we are still staggering about like a man knocked on the
head in a dark road.

'But let me tell you the tale of M. Petit and Mademoiselle Colombel.
Mademoiselle Colombel was a lay teacher at the head of one of our
schools, the school of the Petit St.-Jean. I don't quite see, by the
way,' he observed, 'why M. Petit and his squad have not changed the
names of these schools. In Paris, you know, they had the courage to
change the name of one of the great lyceums into the Lyceum Lakanal. To
be sure it didn't stay changed very long, for even Paris--which suffers
one of its boulevards to commemorate that wretched creature Victor
Noir--wouldn't stand Lakanal. But to infect the minds of children with
the names of little Saints--surely this is a monstrous thing! Well,
Mademoiselle Colombel lost her temper one day, and tried to find it
about the person of one of her little pupils, with slaps, and pinches,
and other caresses of the kind. She was brought up before the police for
it, and sentenced to pay a small fine with costs. She appealed, but the
court confirmed the sentence of the police magistrate, who had acted
strictly within the law. What followed? This was in May 1885. Mdlle.
Colombel declared herself to be a persecuted martyr of "laicisation,"
and in that capacity called upon the mayor, M. Petit, for aid and
comfort. I believe they were old allies in the sacred cause. Be this as
it may, the mayor made himself her champion against the magistrate, and
wrote her, for public use, this letter. Pray print it. It is a great
thing for Amiens to possess a mayor, and for France to possess a
senator, who can write such a letter. It ought to have been sent to the
Exposition.

'"Amiens, May 1885.

'"Madame,--On the strength of calumnious