THE BUTTERFLY MAN The passing and repassing shadows of craft gave a fitful luster to the river; so crisply white were the spanning highways that the eye grew quickly dim with looking; the brisk channel breeze which moved with rough gaiety through the trees in the gardens of the Tuileries, had, long hours before, blown away the storm.

Bright sunshine, expanses of deep cerulean blue, towering banks of pleasant clouds, these made Paris happy to-day, in spots.
The great minister gazed across the river, his hands under the tails of his frock, and the perturbation of his mind expressed by the frequent flapping of those somber woolen wings.

To the little man who watched him, there was a faint resemblance to a fiddling cricket.
"Sometimes I am minded to trust the whole thing to luck, and bother no more about him." "Monsieur, I have obeyed orders for seven years, since we first recognized the unfortunate affair.

Nothing he has done in this period is missing from my notebook; and up to the present time he has done--nothing.

But just a little more patience.