worst quality that the Government makes the largest profit. It is in
every sense of the word a weed which grows as lustily as any of its
compeers in and around Oran, Algiers, and Bonah.

The Rue St. Gingolphe is within a stone's-throw of the Ecole des
Beaux-Arts, and in the very centre of a remarkably cheap and yet
respectable quarter. Thus there are many young men occupying apartments
in close proximity--and young men do not mind much what they smoke,
especially provincial young men living in Paris. They feel it incumbent
upon them to be constantly smoking something--just to show that they are
Parisians, true sons of the pavement, knowing how to live. And their
brightest hopes are in all truth realised, because theirs is certainly a
reckless life, flavoured as it is with "number one" tobacco, and those
"little corporal" cigarettes which are enveloped in the blue paper.

The tobacconist's shop is singularly convenient. It has, namely, an
entrance at the back, as well as that giving on to the street of St.
Gingolphe. This entrance is through a little courtyard, in which is the
stable and coach-house combined, where Madame Perinere, a lady who
paints the magic word "Modes" beneath her name on the door-post of
number seventeen, keeps the dapper little cart and pony which carry her
bonnets to the farthest corner of Paris.

The tobacconist is a large man, much given to perspiration. In fact, one
may safely make the statement that he perspires annually from the middle
of April to the second or even third week in October. In consequence of
this habit he wears no collar, and a man without a collar does not start
fairly on the social race. It is always best to make inquiries before
condemning a man who wears no collar. There is probably a very good
reason, as in the case of Mr. Jacquetot, but it is to be feared that few