It has occurred to me that of late years--I mean the years immediately before 1914--Paris has been rather more bent upon adapting itself to human and moral as well as scientific progress. There has certainly been less debauchery visible to the naked eye. I was assured that the patronage had so fallen away from the Moulin Rouge that they were planning to turn it into a decent theater. Nor during my sojourn did anybody in my hearing so much as mention the Dead Rat. I doubt whether it is still in existence.

The last time I was in Maxim's--quite a dozen years ago now--a young woman sat next to me whose story could be read in her face. She was a pretty thing not five and twenty, still blooming, with iron-gray hair. It had turned in a night, I was told. She had recently come from Baltimore and knew no more what she was doing or whither she was drifting than a baby. The old, old story: a comfortable home and a good husband; even a child or two; a scoundrel, a scandal, an elopement, and the inevitable desertion. Left without a dollar in the streets of Paris. She was under convoy of a noted procuress.

"A duke or the morgue," she whimpered, "in six months."

Three months sufficed. They dragged all that remained of her out of the Seine, and then the whole of the pitiful disgrace and tragedy came out.