composition, produces a kind of exhalation, an intellectual
transpiration, which, though light and perhaps invisible to a superficial
spectator, is nevertheless appreciable by a properly adjusted instrument.

I have adjusted my instrument very satisfactorily (I mean the one I carry
in my good square German head), and I am not afraid of losing a single
drop of this valuable fluid, as it condenses itself upon the plate of my
observation. A prepared surface is what I need, and I have prepared my
surface.

Unfortunately here, also, I find the individual native in the minority.
There are only four French persons in the house--the individuals
concerned in its management, three of whom are women, and one a man. This
preponderance of the feminine element is, however, in itself
characteristic, as I need not remind you what an abnormally--developed
part this sex has played in French history. The remaining figure is
apparently that of a man, but I hesitate to classify him so
superficially. He appears to me less human than simian, and whenever I
hear him talk I seem to myself to have paused in the street to listen to
the shrill clatter of a hand-organ, to which the gambols of a hairy
_homunculus_ form an accompaniment.

I mentioned to you before that my expectation of rough usage, in
consequence of my German nationality, had proved completely unfounded. No
one seems to know or to care what my nationality is, and I am treated, on
the contrary, with the civility which is the portion of every traveller
who pays the bill without scanning the items too narrowly. This, I
confess, has been something of a surprise to me, and I have not yet made
up my mind as to the fundamental cause of the anomaly. My determination
to take up my abode in a French interior was largely dictated by the