horses of the merry-go-round to be mounted; they had to dash
down the great chute and take a turn in the Venetian gondolas,
to be weighed in the machine and touch the arm of the "human
torpedo."

But Madame Ewans could not help returning again and again to
stand before the booth of a hypnotist from Paris, a clairvoyante
boasting a certificate signed by the Minster of Agriculture and
Commerce and by three Doctors of the Faculty. She gazed enviously
at the servant-girls as they trooped up blushing into the van
meagrely furnished with a bed and a couple of chairs; but she
could not pluck up courage to follow their example.

She recalled to mind how a hypnotist had once helped a friend
of hers to recover some stolen forks and spoons. She had even
gone so far as to consult a fortune-teller shortly before Edgar's
birth, and the cards had foretold a boy.

All three were tired out and overloaded with crockery, glass,
reed-pipes, sticks of sugar-candy, cakes of ginger-bread and
macaroons. For all that, they paid a visit to the wax-works,
where they saw Monseigneur Sibour's body lying in state at the
Archbishop's Palace, the execution of Mary Queen of Scots, models
of people's legs and arms disfigured by various hideous diseases,
and a Circassian maiden stepping out of the bath--"the purest
type of female beauty," as a placard duly informed the public.
Madame Ewans examined this last exhibit with a curiosity that
very soon became critical.

"People may say what they please," she muttered; "if you offered