_The Weather_.--Of course you must introduce this subject, and as everything that _can_ be said _has_ been said about it, you may quote SYDNEY SMITH as your authority for observing, that the only possible sport for M.F.H.'s at this time of the year must be "_hunt--the slipper!_" If the point of this "good thing" is not immediately obvious, the fault will be with SIDNEY SMITH, and not with you. And this quaint oddity should satiate your audience with mirth and merriment until next week--and even longer!
[Illustration: A COLD RECEPTION: OR PARLIAMENT MEETING IN A BLIZZARD.]
Forget at this moment where I was born, but I lived long enough at Marseilles to be married in that great southern French city. My wife's father had been in the Marines; her uncle (on the grandfather's side) had been a _Sapeur pompier_. Thus did I, as it were, become _lié_ with the sea and land forces of my adopted country. My wife's mother was a descendant of a noble but anonymous family in the Vosges, whilst her maternal uncle was accustomed to attach to himself some local unpopularity by preferring for investigation a complicated sheet which set forth his genealogy, tracing his origin back to the Bourbons.
You ask me which Bourbon? I frankly answer, I cannot tell. My wife's maternal uncle spoke of them as "_the_ Bourbons," just as you talk of "_the_ Groceries," and no one asks you _Lequel_? As for my own ancestry, I do not speak of it. I have never been in the habit of thrusting myself on the attention of the public. It is sufficient for me that my wife's maternal uncle's ancestors were Bourbons.
I first began to take charge of public affairs in connection with an election that took place in the city where I found myself. M. DE LESSEPS opposed THIERS and GAMBETTA. He presented himself as an independent candidate. Was he? I suspected. Already I had my secret agents in every centre of population. One, whose letter bore the post-mark the Pyramids, placed in my hand proof that DE LESSEPS was an official candidate of the Empire. I secretly conveyed this information to a local newspaper. The news burst like a tempest on the public of Marseilles, and swept away in its irresistible whirl the candidature of M. DE LESSEPS.