bracelets, the Prince looked at the jeweler's assistant.

"Which would you choose for your sweetheart?" asked he.

The young man indicated one of the pair.

"In that case, take the other, you will make two women happy," said
the subtlest of modern diplomatists, "and make your sweetheart happy
too, in my name."

The two fair ladies smiled, and the young shopman took his departure,
delighted with the Prince's present and the implied compliment to his
taste.

A woman alights from her splendid carriage before one of the expensive
shops where shawls are sold in the Rue Vivienne. She is not alone;
women almost always go in pairs on these expeditions; always make the
round of half a score of shops before they make up their minds, and
laugh together in the intervals over the little comedies played for
their benefit. Let us see which of the two acts most in character--the
fair customer or the seller, and which has the best of it in such
miniature vaudevilles?

If you attempt to describe a sale, the central fact of Parisian trade,
you are in duty bound, if you attempt to give the gist of the matter,
to produce a type, and for this purpose a shawl or a chatelaine
costing some three thousand francs is a more exacting purchase than a
length of lawn or dress that costs three hundred. But know, oh foreign
visitors from the Old World and the New (if ever this study of the
physiology of the Invoice should be by you perused), that this