Talk and discussion in the senate, the market-place, and the schools are cheap; even barbarians are not wholly without them.

But their refinement and concentration in the _salon_--of which the president is a woman of tact and culture--this is a phenomenon which never appeared but in Paris in the eighteenth century.

And yet scholars, men of the world, men of business passed through this wonderland with eyes blindfolded.

They are free to enter, they go, they come, without a sign that they have realised the marvellous scene that they were permitted to traverse.

One does not wonder that they did not perceive that in those graceful drawing-rooms, filled with stately company of elaborate manners, ideas and sentiments were discussed and evolved which would soon be more explosive than gunpowder.