where poor students linger in the sun; detects a government spy in the
loquacious son of Crispin who acts as porter at his lodgings; pulls the
_cordon bleu_ at a dear author's oaken door on the _quatrième etage_ in
a social mood, and recalls Wellington's marquee on the Boulevard
Italien, in the midst of the gay throng; notes the dexterity of a
peripatetic shoeblack at his work; loves to sup in one of the
restaurants of the Palais Royal, because there Dr. Franklin was
entertained by the Duke of Orleans; remembers, at the church of St.
Genevieve, that Abelard once lectured on its site; and, gazing on the
beautiful ware in one of the cabinets of the Louvre, muses of the holy
patience of Palissy. By the handsome quays and bridges of the Seine, he
tries to realize that once only an islet covered with mud hovels met the
wanderer's view. He smiles at the abundance of fancy names, some chosen
for their romantic sound, and others for the renowned associations,
which are attached to vocalist, shop, and mouchoir. He separates, in his
thought, the incongruous emblems around him at this moment,--tricolor
and cresent, St. George and the Lilies, 'God save the Queen' and High
Mass, banners that have floated over adverse armies since the
crusades,--amicably folded over the corpse of a French veteran! Nor are
character and manners less suggestive to such an observer; if an
American, he beholds with astonishment, after all he has heard of the
proverbial courtesy of the French, women habitually yield the wall to
men, and stops with ill-disguised impatience, on returning from an
afternoon's ride, to have his carriage examined at the gate; contrasts
the degraded state of the lower orders with the general urbanity and
quietness of demeanor and the stern sway of political rule; marks the
little crucifix and cup of holy water at the head of the peasant's bed,
and the diamond cross on the lace kerchief of the kneeling empress;
recognizes the force of character, the self-dependence, the mental
hardihood of the women, the business method displayed in their exercise