of the
Legion of Honour.

"Grand Dieu," exclaimed Gozlan, "pourquoi lui a-t-on donne cette croix?"

"Vous ne savez pas?" said Alexandre, looking very wise, as if he had
some important state secret to reveal.

"Assurement, je ne le sais pas," quoth Gozlan, "ni vous non plus."

"Ah, par exemple, moi, je le sais."

"He bien, dites alors."

"On lui a donne la croix parceque il n'en avait pas."

It was the most childish of all tricks, but Gozlan laughed at it, and,
when he wrote his piece, remembered it. He amplified the very small
joke, and, on the first night of his play, the house went into
convulsions over it.

Major Fraser's kindness and gentleness extended to all men--except to
professional politicians, and those, from the highest to the lowest, he
detested and despised. He rarely spoke on the subject of politics, but
when he did every one sat listening with the raptest attention; for he
was a perfect mine of facts, which he marshalled with consummate ability
in order to show that government by party was of all idiotic
institutions the most idiotic. But his knowledge of political history
was as nothing to his familiarity with the social institutions of every
civilized country and of every period. Curiously enough, the whole of
his library in his own apartment did not exceed two or three scores of
volumes. His memory was something prodigious, and even men like Dumas
and Balzac confessed themselves his inferiors in that respect. The mere
mention of the most trifling subject sufficed to set it in motion, and
the listeners were treated to a "magazine article worth fifty centimes
la ligne au moins," as Dumas put it. But the major could never be
induced to write one. Strange to say, he often used to hint that his was
no mere book-knowledge. "Of course, it is perfectly ridiculous," he
remarked with a strange smile, "but every now and again I feel as if all
this did not come to me through reading, but from personal experience.
At times I become almost convinced that I lived with Nero, that I knew
Dante personally, and so forth."

When Major Fraser died, not a single letter was found in his apartment
giving a clue to his antecedents. Merely a file of receipts, and a scrap
of paper attached to one--the receipt of the funeral company for his
grave, and expenses of his burial. The memorandum gave instructions to
advertise his demise for a week in the _Journal des Debats_, the money
for which would be found in the drawer