e fitly. "He is like the policeman who ran in a woman of
sixty all by himself, and boasted that he could have done it if she had
been eighty."

But M. Boitelle, though kind-hearted, had no sympathy whatsoever with
mawkish philanthropy. The Empress, on the other hand, had absolute
paroxysms of it. She was like the Spanish high-born dame who insisted
upon a tombstone for the grave of a bull, the killing and torturing of
which in the ring she had frantically applauded. One day she expressed
her wish to M. Boitelle to pay a visit to Saint-Lazare. There is nothing
analogous to that institution in England. The "unfortunate woman" who
prowls about the streets before or after nightfall is--except in a few
garrison towns--tacitly ignored by our legislators, and when she offends
against the common law, treated by our magistrates like any other member
of society. We have no establishments where the moral cancer eats deeper
into the flesh and the mind by the very attempt to isolate those who
suffer most from it; we have no system which virtually bars the way to a
reformed life by having given official authority to sin, and by
recording for evermore the names of those whom want alone compelled to
have themselves inscribed as outcasts on those hellish registers. We
have no Saint-Lazare, and Heaven be praised for it!

M. Boitelle knew the moral and mental state of most of the inmates of
Saint-Lazare sufficiently well to foster no illusions with regard to the
benefit to be derived by them from the solitary visit of so exalted a
personage, while, on the other hand, he felt perfectly aware that it was
morbid curiosity, however well disguised, that prompted the step. At the
same time, the respect due to his sovereign made him reluctant to expose
her, needlessly, to a possible, if not to a probable insult; in short,
he considered the projected "tour of inspection" an ill-concerted one.
He also knew that it would be idle to bring his fund of shrewd
philosophy to bear upon the Empress, to make her relinquish her design,
so he adopted instead the outspoken method of the soldier. "Whatever
your charitable feelings may be for those who suffer, madame," he said,
"your place is not among them." The words sound a shade more abrupt in
French, but a moment's reflection would have shown the most fastidious
lady that no offence on the speaker's part was intended. The Empress,
however, drew herself up to her full height. "Charity can go any and
everyw