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309 Everybody knows that the French papers are none too nice, so it will be readily understood that happenings bad enough for them to endeavor to suppress must indeed have been bad.

The London papers devoted a great deal of space to the scandal; in fact they seemed to gloat over it, and when it was subsequently hinted that the contagion had spread to the English metropolis, Londoners grew more and more interested each day.

"We know of no spectacle so ridiculous as the British public in one of its periodical fits of morality," says Macaulay. "In general, elopements, divorces, and family quarrels pass with little notice. We read the scandal, talk about it for a day, and forget it. But once in six or seven years, our virtue becomes outrageous."

It seemed as though this "once in six or seven years" had come.

I was in London at the time of which I write, brought from the seclusion into which I had withdrawn, by business connected prosaically with my financial affairs, and requiring my presence. For two years I had been trying to live