f spurious coins in the so-called Gay City
and the tendency of Parisians to work them off on foreigners. As he
says, a more inhospitable course one cannot conceive. Foreigners in
Paris should be treated as guests, and just now, with all this Entente
talk, the English especially. But no. It is the English who are the
first victims of the possessor of obsolete francs, two-franc and
five-franc pieces guiltless of their country's silver and ten-franc
pieces into whose composition no gold has entered.

He had been in Paris but an hour or so when--but let me tell the story
as my travelling companion told it to me.

"I don't know what your experience in Paris has been," he said, "but I
have been victimised right and left."

He was now getting up while I lay at comparative ease in my berth and
watched his difficulties in the congested room and thought what horrid
vests he wore.

"I had been in Paris but a few hours," he continued, "when it was
necessary to pay a cabman. I handed him a franc. He examined it, laughed
and returned it. I handed him another. He went through the same
performance. Having found some good money to get rid of him, I sat down
outside a cafe to try and remember where I had received the change in
which these useless coins had been inserted. During a week in Paris much
of my time was spent in that way."

He sighed and drew on his trousers. His braces were red.

"I showed the bad francs to a waiter," he went on, "and he, like the
cabman, laughed. In fact, next to an undressed woman, there is no stroke
of wit so certain of Parisian mirth as a bad coin. The first thought of
everyone to whom I showed my collection was to be amused." His face
blackened with rage. "This cheerful callousness in a matter involving a
total want of principle and straight-dealing as between man and man," he
said, "denotes to what a point of cynicism the Parisians have attained."

I agreed with him.

"The waiter," he continued, "went through my money and pointed out what
was good and what either bad or out of currency. He called other waiters
to enjoy the joke. It seemed that in about four hours I had acquired
three bad francs, one bad two-franc piece and two bad five-franc pieces.
I put them away in another pocket and got fresh change from him, which,
as I subsequently discovered, contained one obsolete five-franc piece
and two discredited francs. And so it went on. I was a continual target
for them."

Here he began to wash,