diminutive size a secret altogether. It is
astonishing how many middle-aged men are not
more than four foot nothing, and the world, even
to the wives of their bosoms, are not in the
least aware of the fact. Louis le Grand
masqueraded it through life on high-heeled
shoes and in a towering periwig; and it was
only when he died that the undertaker first,
and Europe afterwards, discovered that he was
a little man. Voltaire, again, was not half so
tall as he gave himself out, and the world
supposed him to be. It is better, perhaps, that
these things should be kept secrets of state, even
from ourselves. It is not good to find out too
much about great men—about man altogether it
may be. Are we anything the better for the
information imparted to us, with a diabolic sneer
by Swift, that "man is only a forked straddling
animal with bandy legs"?

It is curious to contrast the images handed
down to us of the illustrious dead who were of
no great stature, with what might have been
their semblance had they become old. Alexander
the Great, for all Apelles' flattery, was a little
man. Imagine the conqueror of Darius as both
little and old! Or, more suggestive still, picture
to yourself Napoleon the First, had he survived
Sir Hudson Lowe—who, by the way, did live to
be old, and of no great stature—as a little old
man—brisk, alert, snuffy, and with a scratch-
wig! Not that little old kings and emperors have
been, or are, rarities. Sovereigns, as a rule, run
small. No doubt continual preoccupation in
devising beneficial measures for their subjects
dries them up. They are so good that they lose
flesh. The weight of a crown contracts their
joints. The odour of incense—like the gin given
to the poor little children of acrobats—stops
their growth. Turn over the Almanach de
Gotha, and interleave it with cartes de visite,
and you will find the majority of European
sovereigns to be below the average size. That
long Prince Oscar of Sweden, who came here in
May, was a phenomenon to rank in a museum
by the side of the Emperor of Russia's colossal
drum-major, and O'Brien, the Irish giant.
Besides, was not his Swedish highness's
grandfather Bernadotte, the grenadier?

The mention of continental potentates reminds
me that France is to this day the country of little
old men. Still at the Café de Foy, and other good
old pigtail establishments, where smoking is not
permitted, and the poisonous absinthe emits no
vapid odour—still in Luxembourg and Tuileries
gardens; in salons of the Faubourg St.
Germain; in cabinets de lecture hard by the
Odéon, do you meet the little old Frenchman
with his cheerful dried chimpanzee face, his
thatch of white stubble, his snowy neckerchief,
the red ribbon at his button-hole, and the never-
failing snuff-box in his hand, ready to be offered
to all acquaintances. In his youth he was a
Merveilleux, a Muscadin, an Incroyable. He
remembers the first Empire, the two Restorations,
the Hundred Days. He was a page to the
Reine Hortense, perhaps; an officer in Charles
the Tenth's Royal Guards, probably. He ceased
to trouble himself with politics after the 27th of
July, 1830. At the monarchies, republics, and
empires, which have succeeded that convulsion,
he shrugs his little shoulders with philosophic
indifference. "C'est comme ça," he says. He
speaks of all the kings, dictators, marshals,
ministers, since 1830, as "ces Messieurs!" Let
us lift the hat to this little old Frenchman with
his weazen countenance and thin legs, his agile
courteous ways. He, too, is fading out. A
little old Frenchman of the stock once gravely
accounted to me for the undeniable ugliness
and boorishness of the modern Parisian or
"Mossoo," by asserting that he was the
unconscious offspring of the Cossacks who formed
part of the army of occupation in 1815. It is a
wise child that knows his own father. Be it
as it may, it is indubitable that the graceful and
polite little old Frenchman—perfectly well
known in English society forty years ago as the
emigrant chevalier who taught dancing and the
languages in ladies' boarding schools, who was
as gallant as Dunois, and as chivalrous as Bayard,
and lived contentedly on twopence-halfpenny a
day, is on the wane.

Your little old men abroad, live, when they
are to be found extant at all, to a prodigious
age. They seem to be subject to the same
mummifying influences as the bodies of the
old monks in Sicily. They grow very yellow,
very withered, their bones seem to crack as they
walk, but they don't die. Take my friend
Estremadura, for instance. I have known Señor
Ramon de Estremadura ever since I can remember
the knowledge of anything. That Hidalgo
knew my papa, and he has been dead five-and-thirty
years. Estremadura was so old when I
was a child, that the nurses used to frighten me
with him. I have met him off and on, in almost
every capital in Europe. Only this summer,
drinking tea with certain friends, there came a
brisk though tremulous little double knock at
the door. "Ecoutez," cried the lady of the
house; "that surely is Estremadura's knock."
Estremadura! There was a cry of derisive
amazement. Everybody agreed that he had
been dead ten years. Somebody had seen an
account of his funeral in the newspapers. But
the door opened, and Estremadura made his
appearance. He was the same as ever. The
same yellow face, black bead-like eyes, innumerable
wrinkles, fixed grin: the same straw hat,
grass-green coat, white trousers, and big stick—
his unvarying costume ever since I had known
him. "How you do?" was his salutation to me.
"Ver well since I saw you lasse?" I had not
seen him for fifteen years. He chatted and
talked and drank tea. He was asked whence
he had come? From Rome. Whither he was
going? To Stockholm. He was charming;
yet we could not help feeling, all of us, as
though we were sitting in the presence of a
facetious phantom, of a jocular ghost. It was
rather a relief when he skipped away, and was
seen no more. I wonder whether he will ever
turn up again. It is clear that Estremadura is
ninety, if he be a day old; yet I dare say he