pause to seek it. One need not seek the reason with much assiduity in
this instance, because the tobacconist of the Rue St. Gingolphe is
always prepared to explain it at length. French people are thus. They
talk of things, and take pleasure in so doing, which we, on this side of
the Channel, treat with a larger discretion.

Mr. Jacquetot does not even wear a collar on Sunday, for the simple
reason that Sunday is to him as other days. He attends no place of
worship, because he acknowledges but one god--the god of most
Frenchmen--his inner man. His pleasures are gastronomical, his sorrows
stomachic. The little shop is open early and late, Sundays, week-days,
and holidays. Moreover, the tobacconist--Mr. Jacquetot himself--is
always at his post, on the high chair behind the counter, near the
window, where he can see into the street. This constant attention to
business is almost phenomenal, because Frenchmen who worship the god of
Mr. Jacquetot love to pay tribute on fete-days at one of the little
restaurants on the Place at Versailles, at Duval's, or even in the
Palais Royal. Mr. Jacquetot would have loved nothing better than a
pilgrimage to any one of these shrines, but he was tied to the little
tobacco store. Not by the chains of commerce. Oh, no! When rallied by
his neighbours for such an unenterprising love of his own hearth, he
merely shrugged his heavy shoulders.

"What will you?" he would say; "one has one's affairs."

Now the affairs of Mr. Jacquetot were, in the days with which we have to
do, like many things on this earth, inasmuch as they were not what they
seemed.

It would be inexpedient, for reasons closely connected with the