LOUIS NAPOLEON AND HIS NOSE.
The following passage from a letter is amusing, as well as instructive:
"Trifles are said to amuse weak minds, and probably by a similar process of reasoning, they may be said to annoy great minds. The extreme susceptibility of the President respecting any attempt to turn either his person or policy into ridicule has been frequently noticed, and this excessive susceptibility has gradually attained an intensity which gives it the air of absolute monomania. The police have peremptory orders to ravage any shop in which any work or engraving is to be found in any way reflecting upon that prominent feature in the Presidental visage which has secured for him the time-honored title of 'Noscitur a naso.' Any semblance of a caricature on the Presidental proboscis exposes the unfortunate possessor (as George Robins would have said) to the persecution of the police. A short time past Paris was inundated with a ludicrous counterfeit portrait of the President's features, which were fashioned into a crockery tobacco-pot. The resemblance was so striking, and yet so irresistibly ludicrous withal—for you know there is but one step from the sublime to the ridiculous—that these tobacco-pots were eagerly purchased, and the designer made a small fortune in his way. The police have of late busily occupied themselves in hunting out the purchasers of these crockery caricatures, which are seized and broken without mitigation or remorse. The crockery shops have been ransacked, and whenever any have been found the shopkeepers have been exposed to considerable annoyance and persecution. Some weeks since two girls were condemned to fine and imprisonment for having openly declared that they never could fall in love with Louis Napoleon. But the Prince now appears disposed to carry the matter still further; for it is alleged that rather sharp notes have been sent to Belgium by the Minister of Foreign Affairs with respect to a masquerade which took place at Ghent in the latter part of the Carnival. Some young men, it appears, promenaded through the streets, a man on a horse, wearing a dress to represent the President of the Republic, and with a gigantic false nose. This man carried in his hand a whip with which he struck from time to time a set of puppets which he carried in his hand—the puppets, each of which had a lock on his mouth, being intended to represent the French Senators and Deputies. The Belgian government is said to have replied that it disapproved of the parody, and offered to dismiss the commissary of police who did not fulfill his duty by preventing it. But the French government not considering this satisfaction sufficient, requires, it is said, the dismissal of the governor, who was on the balcony when the masquerade passed."