"And I tell you what, uncle of mine," the
mayor resumed, jauntily fluttering the
blotting-book leaves, and twirling (quite
accidentally, of course), the greasy little packet
of wealth into his ravenous palm, "you
shall not say that the Russian police never
return any of the goods they have recovered;
for, this very afternoon, I will send down
two of my men, and YOU SHALL HAVE YOUR
SUGAR-LOAVES BACK AGAIN."

With a suppressed shriek, the emancipated-
loaf captive entreated the mayor never to
let him hear or see more of that accursed
sweetstuff. The mayor was a placable man,
and open to suasion. He promised to allow the
sugar-question to drop for ever; and, dignifying
the unroubled grocer with the affectionate
cognomen of Batiouschka—little father
—bade him an airy good morning, and retired
into his sanctum sanctorum: there, doubtless
to lock up his honestly-earned roubles in
his cassette, and, perhaps, to laugh somewhat
in that official sleeve of his, at the rare
sport of swindling a Fransoutz. The moral
of the story is, that Mélasse did not quit
Moscow at once, and in disgust. He stopped,
for he also was possessed of that fixed idea
common to most foreign traders in Russia, of
acquiring a given number of thousand silver
roubles, and retiring, in the end to an Arcis-
sur-Aube of his own, where he could enjoy
his otium cum dignitate, and abuse the land
where he had made his money. He stopped;
and there was great joy among the police-
population of Moscow the holy, that there
was no Inostranez, or stranger, in Moscow who
kept on better terms with Boguey, or was
prompter and more liberal in his felicitations
(silver rouble felicitations) on New Year's
Day than M. Mélasse of the Tvershala.

Now, New Year's Day is the Russian (as
it is the French) Boxing Day. Apart from
the genteel cadeaux of bon-bons, gloves, and
jewellery, which you are expected (under
pain of banishment from soirees and ostracism
from morning calls) to make to
genteel acquaintances, you have your
servants to tip; your dvnornik to tip; and,
especially, your police to tip. If you are fortunate
enough to be a private individual, you
get off with a visit from the Nadziratelle of
the Quartal, or quartier (a sub-division of the
arrondissement), who, with many bows, offers
you his felicitations, and to whom you give
ten roubles. But, if you are a nobleman
or an hotel-keeper, your lot is far harder.
By a compliment of fifty (many give a
hundred) roubles you may purchase impunity
during the ensuing year for almost every act
or deed, legal or illegal, over which the police
exercise any amount of control. The hotel-
keepers give and tremble; the nobles give
and despise. That same newly-fledged cornet
I told you of, who had the big house to
himself, assured me that he never allowed an officer
of the judicial police to cross the threshold of
his apartment. The secret police come in without
being asked, and leave their marks behind
them. "When New Year's Day arrives,"
my young friend would say, "and the pigs
come with their salutations, I send them out the
money, but, as to entering my house—never!"
Horror, hatred, and contempt for Boguey
are, I believe, the only definite and sincere
feelings of which Nous Autres are capable.

I wish that I could leave M. Hyacinthe, the
perfumer, without telling you about somebody
I met there one Sunday (I used
frequently to dine with that genial barber)
somebody whose face and voice, and gestures,
and miserable story, came with me adown
the Gulf of Finland, and through the Baltic
Sea; came with me through the Little
Belt and up Flensburg Fjord; came with me
throught the timber-town of Rendsburg, and
by the iron way to Hamburg, and so to
Brussels in Brabant, and at last to where
I now write this. You shall hear.

There is, perchance, no family circle so
difficult of access as a French one. A man
may live twenty years in France, without
once enjoying even the spectre of a chance
of being admitted into a French interior.
You, boastful Paris men who pay your first-
class fare at London Bridge at half-past
eight P.M., and are in Paris by half-past nine
the next morning—who live in Paris for
months, and fancy you know Paris life
thoroughly -- to what extent are you cognisant
of the real ways and means, of the real
manners and customs, of the inscrutable
Lutetia. You walk about the Boulevards or
the Palais Royal; you stay at Meurice's or the
Hotel Bedford; you dine at the Trois Frères
or at Phillipe's; you even, if you be of Bohemia,
and determined to see life, live in the
Rue St. Jacques, or that of the Ecole de
Médecine, frequent the Prado and the
Closerie des Lilas, and mistake some
milliners' girl for Beranger's Lisette. Have you
ever seen the French at home? Do you know
what manner of people they be? When you
do know, we shall have fewer foolish books
written about foreign countries. But what
am I saying about foreign countries? Have
I not been to a foreign country myself, and
am I not (it may be) writing an excessively
foolish book about it. Are we not living in
the days of embassies, and of literary
secretaries of embassy who seem determined to
verify the maxim of Sir Henry Wotton:—
that "an ambassador is one sent abroad to lie
for the good of his country;" adding, by way
of rider to his dictum, the axiom of La
Rochefoucault that "great names dishonour rather
than elevate those who do not know how
to bear them with propriety."

Without enlarging at all upon any opportunities
I might, or might not have had of seeing
French people at home, in their own
country, I hope I may be allowed to allude
to the very pleasant Sundays I spent with
my friend the French barber. It was a
model French interior. There was the grand