MM THE OFFICIALS responsible for ensuring the conservation of our parks and national palaces are not having a good press at the moment. Since Mr. the architect Chaussemiche, eager to fight against the high cost of living, wanted to lower the price of fuel by cutting down the trees of Versailles and thus show the henchmen of the old regime what a republic is made of, we have discovered more than one subject of complaint in the way in which the gardens and the State domains are administered.
Let us take advantage of this liquidation of a stock of bad humor to collect some just grievances from taxpayers who are friends of nature.

The Rambouillet state forest is managed by its guards with truly excessive financial harshness. We know that in the spring Jenny the worker is made to pay a tax when she comes to pick lily of the valley. But, this revenue period being relatively short, we have found better. So that autumn may also enrich the administration, they intend to ransom walkers who pick mushrooms in the same way.

Meanwhile, in the park of Saint-Cloud, the guards have started hunting down painters. The passer-by who can swear that no aesthetic concern guides him in his walk has the right to move freely, but our Athenian republic demands a ransom from all artists who dare to come and draw inspiration from its gardens.

You will see that, if our ingenious officials are not stopped in this race for the right to toll, next year they will make us pay a special tax on forest oxygen and will force us to take a perfume ticket to be allowed to bend over a rose.

EMILE.