wine-shop and masticate a "bifteck" swimming
in oily butter, washed down with draughts of
wine which resembles red ink in consistency and
flavour. For such men I write not. For those
who mind what they eat it is, I think, impossible
to dine at Paris (except at the tavern I have
mentioned above) for less than six or seven
francs, including everything.

I am going to tell the reader a thing for which
he may laugh at me if he will.

Although I never went to the Café
Cartilagineux without execrating its fare, I yet
found in that place of entertainment one source
of attraction which caused me to take my meal
of horseflesh there more frequently than suited
my organs of digestion or my sense of taste.

At the buffet which stands in the middle of
the large room in which the bad dinners are
served there sits a middle-aged matron of
comfortable appearance, whose function it is to make
out the bills, to distribute the bits of sugar for
coffee, and otherwise to superintend the general
cartilaginous arrangements of the Café.

Seated beside this personage, and enclosed
behind the buffet as within the outworks of a
fortification, there would be found occasionally
—but not always—a young girl, her daughter—
a pearl of loveliness.

I have never seen a more refined or exalted
beauty. I have never seen a human being so
misplaced. I know neither modesty nor goodness
when I see them, if this girl (to whom I
never spoke a word in my life) was not possessed
of a pure and loving soul.

What a combination was here. What an
instance of that irony of which one sees examples
in every hour of life. Consider it well. In this
scene of French tavern existence, of common
feeding, of vile meat and viler cookery, in this
sickly atmosphere of stews and gravies, of
weaky soups and leggy fowls, in this din of
squalor, in this sordid environment, there is
found a jewel, for which the gilding of a palace
would be a mean and unworthy sitting.

Strange and terrible anomaly! Sudden and
bewildering transition. Straight, and at one
step, from the ridiculous to the sublime, from
grossest garbage to most glorious beauty, from
rough and vulgar discord to a strain of harmony
that holds the senses rapt.

Must I own that I often went to this wretched
tavern, simply that I might have the pleasure of
sitting near this charming creature, that I found
a sense of companionship in the mere fact of
being in the room with her—and that I never
left that miserable café but in a gentler mood
than when I entered it. Must I own this, and
hear the reader say, " This is either a boy of
eighteen, or an idiot."  Yet I am neither—or at
any rate I am not eighteen. I have almost forgotten
that I ever was. It must be, then, that I
am idiotic—to go and eat bad dinners that I may
be in the room with the guardian of a side-board.

If it is not easy to dine cheap at Paris, it is
equally difficult to go to the play in an economical
manner. At some of the theatres, it is
true, there are besides the " fauteuils
d'orchestre," a range of places between them and
the pit, called " stalles d'orchestre," in which
you can sit with some degree of ease, at a moderate
expenditure. An admirable arrangement
by-the-by, which may be seen, together with all
other admirable arrangements, at our own new
Adelphi.

The stalles d'orchestre, however, are not to be
met with in all the Parisian theatres, and woe to
the man who buries himself in delusive " pourtours"
or " baignoires." Woe still more to him
who ascends. The heat, the absence of ventilation
(rendered so much more unendurable by the closing
of all the box doors), these things prevent a
man from taking any pleasure in what is going on.

The tyranny of officials in Paris is seen every-
where, and is perfectly unbearable. Routine is
adhered to and enforced, as in this matter of the
hermetical sealing of box doors, in a manner very
difficult to submit to. The French mob are
strangely and inconsistently submissive in all
these matters, and allow themselves to be
treated like children.

The cheap dinner and the cheap theatrical
experience, then, being alike unsatisfactory, let
us now go home to our apartment and see how
we like the cheap lodgings. Perhaps the room
may look nicer with the bed made. Unhappily
there is one defect about that bed though, which
all the making in the world will never remedy.
It is so desperately and insanely short. I know
by measurement that I can never be comfortable
in that bed. By measurement, I say. I tested
the length of that couch with my umbrella while
there was nobody looking. I am two umbrellas
long, and that bed measures an umbrella and
three-quarters. How can I hope for rest? How
can a man sleep peacefully in a bed which is a
quarter of an umbrella too short for him? I
must make up my mind to it, however. There
is no remedy, let there be no regret. Let
me——What's this?—I am grasping the sheet
in my hand to test its dryness—Damp? No,
not damp—wet—wringing wet. Ha! ha!—a
short bed and a damp, eh? We will lie down
in our clothes.

Lying down in your clothes is a pleasant and
refreshing process. But why does it make you
feel the next morning as if you had been beaten
with clubs from head to foot—as if you had
been intoxicated overnight? Why does no
amount of washing make you feel clean? Why
do your limbs ache, and why are your eyes full
of sand? Lying down in your clothes is just
better than rheumatic fever—and that's all.

Yet I had two nights of it. For I had taken
such an aversion to the room and to the house I
was lodging in, that the day after my first
experience of the damp sheets I fled from the
shelter of the odious walls and kept out all day.
It was the day of that walk in the suburbs, of
which more is said elsewhere. I deluded myself
with vain hopes that the sheets would get dry of
themselves. But they did nothing of the kind,
and I was compelled to seek a trousered repose
once more.