your rights in any corner of Paris. It does look as if he might slip
that slender rapier through your body in a second, and pull it out
and wipe it, and not move a muscle; but I don't think he would do it
unless he were directly ordered to. He would not be likely to knock
you down and drag you out, in mistake for the rowdy who was
assaulting you.

A great contrast between the habits of the people of London and Paris
is shown by their eating and drinking. Paris is brilliant with
cafes: all the world frequents them to sip coffee (and too often
absinthe), read the papers, and gossip over the news; take them away,
as all travelers know, and Paris would not know itself. There is not
a cafe in London: instead of cafes, there are gin-mills; instead of
light wine, there is heavy beer. The restaurants and restaurant life
are as different as can be. You can get anything you wish in Paris:
you can live very cheaply or very dearly, as you like. The range is
more limited in London. I do not fancy the usual run of Paris
restaurants. You get a great deal for your money, in variety and
quantity; but you don't exactly know what it is: and in time you tire
of odds and ends, which destroy your hunger without exactly
satisfying you. For myself, after a pretty good run of French
cookery (and it beats the world for making the most out of little),
when I sat down again to what the eminently respectable waiter in
white and black calls "a dinner off the Joint, sir," with what
belongs to it, and ended up with an attack on a section of a cheese
as big as a bass-drum, not to forget a pewter mug of amber liquid, I
felt as if I had touched bottom again,--got something substantial,
had what you call a square meal. The English give you the
substantials, and better, I believe, than any other people.
Thackeray used to come over to Paris to get a good dinner now and