was a vulgar sign bearing, in colored letters, "Good March beer," and
the picture of a foaming pot of the same, with a woman, in a dress
excessively low-necked, on one side, and an hussar on the other,--both
coarsely colored. Consequently, in spite of the blooming flowers and
the fresh country air, this cottage exhaled the same strong and
nauseous odor of wine and food which assails you in Paris as you pass
the door of the cheap cook-shops of the faubourg.

Now you know the surroundings. Behold the inhabitants and hear their
history, which contains more than one lesson for philanthropists.

The proprietor of the Grand-I-Vert, named Francois Tonsard, commends
himself to the attention of philosophers by the manner in which he had
solved the problem of an idle life and a busy life, so as to make the
idleness profitable, and occupation nil.

A jack-of-all-trades, he knew how to cultivate the ground, but for
himself only. For others, he dug ditches, gathered fagots, barked the
trees, or cut them down. In all such work the employer is at the mercy
of the workman. Tonsard owned his plot of ground to the generosity of
Mademoiselle Laguerre. In his early youth he had worked by the day for
the gardener at Les Aigues; and he really had not his equal in
trimming the shrubbery-trees, the hedges, the horn-beams, and the
horse-chestnuts. His very name shows hereditary talent. In remote
country-places privileges exist which are obtained and preserved with
as much care as the merchants of a city display in getting theirs.
Mademoiselle Laguerre was one day walking in the garden, when she
overheard Tonsard, then a strapping fellow, say, "All I need to live
on, and live happily, is an acre of land." The kind creature,
accustomed to make others happy, gave him the acre of vineyard near