our several looms are being wrought; And, by
long habit in these speculations, it seems to me
that I have acquired an extraordinary insight
into the lives of those I meet; or it may be
merely an active fancy, which, because it is
clear, I therefore believe to be true.

Now, there is that young, dark-haired,
desolate-looking man, with a quantity of Palais Royal
jewellery dangling from his chain, and the
unmistakable look of a Frenchman in every inch
of his person; I can see into his life and being
as distinctly as if I were reading a page of long
primer, well leaded. He is a pianoforte tuner—
cannot you see that by his hands?—and he is
the only son of a highly respectable cabinet-maker
in a small provincial town in France.
But cabinet-makers in small provincial towns
are seldom men of means, even if highly
respectable; and when they have ambitious sons,
with talents refusing to develop themselves in
the direction of ordinary mechanical labour, it is
a difficulty to know what to do with them, that
the stars and the pot-au-feu may be served at
the same time. And so when young Auguste,
who wanted only opportunity and encouragement
to become a second Verdi at the least,
finally decided on music as his vocation and
England as his sphere (incited to this last decision
by an insane belief that London was a sunless,
fog-haunted Tom Tiddler's ground, where
gold grew in the streets), Monsieur son Père
and Madame sa Mère could only kiss him weepingly,
invoking all the saints in his behalf, and
letting him depart as a lamb out of the sheep-fold,
with the wolves ranging in procession at
the gate. "Cette maudite Angleterre!" they
said, "and ces malheureuses jeunes miss!"
They made no doubt but that their precious
lamb would be devoured by the wolves in less
than a month, and that he would return to his
native place tacked for life to a jeune Miss
Britannique, with teeth like a horse, a stride
like a grenadier, hair like tow, and masculinity
enough for half a dozen enfants perdus. This
is the current idea of English women in France,
and this is what Auguste's father and mother
pictured to themselves when they drew out the
programme of their son's career in England.

Auguste is thinking now of the past; of that
long, wide, paved street where "Laplace,
Menusier," shines like an oasis of pleasant memories
in the dull desert of his daily life; he is thinking
of la Mère Rougetête and her café, where he
and the young men of the town used to
assemble every evening at eight o'clock precisely,
to play at dominoes and tric-trac, drinking eau
sucré or café noir, as they chose; some—but
these were terrible fellows—adding a little
absinthe or rhum as flavouring. He is thinking of
fat old Babette, the femme de ménage, who is as
much part of his home and its reminiscences as
Maman herself, or Jacques the journeyman;
he sees the lime-trees, with the bees humming
about their flowers, and pretty little Fauchon,
the daughter of "Madame Robert, Confiseur,"
gathering pâquerettes and bluets in the hedgeless
meadows; he sees the old diligence coming
jingling in from Abbeville, and the cocked-hats
of the garde champêtre scouring the country in
search of evil-doers; he sees the good old curé,
full of flesh and kindliness, nodding here and
there to his parishioners, every one of whom is
like his own child; he sees mon père bald,
vivacious, and obese, and ma mère in her pink
ribbons, and black silk dress fitting like a skin;
and then Auguste's heart gets very full, and his
handkerchief is in sorrowful request, and he
feels himself a lonely exile in this perfide
Albion, where no gold grows in the street though
the sun never shines, and where his dreams of
fame and glory and money consequent, have
consolidated themselves into the meagre fact of
pianoforte tuning at two shillings—a reduction
made to schools and professionals.

Poor Auguste! It is a little tragedy, though
—is it not?—which he is enacting in his small
way. He is paying for his English experience
rather dearly; and yet it will be better for him
in the end than if he had remained at that dear
little dull provincial town all his life—a génie
inconnu, giving itself the airs of an ugly duck,
whose brilliant swanhood was ignored by the
inferior fowls, envious of his supremacy. This
was the story I told myself, looking at that
dark-haired young Frenchman with the heavy
eyelids and the melancholy face and
fine-pointed finger-tops, very dirty, who sat by the
door and looked out into the muddy street,
and seemed not far from charcoal or prussic
acid. And yet, perhaps, he was only
tormented about his lodgings, and a landlady
ignorant of the sublime laws of credit; perhaps
his father, a well-to-do burly old curmudgeon,
down in Leicester-square, making his fortune
by all sorts of unhallowed ways, had boxed his
ears this morning for some breach of filial
respect—and these young Frenchmen will cry
for a mere nothing sometimes; or perhaps he has
a headache, and is loathing the idea of Cremorne.

Next to him come two bright, fair-haired
English lads, with shillings apiece in their
pockets, off to the Polytechnic and that jolly
old ghost, for a rare lot of fun. Such a contrast
as they present to melancholy, cream-coloured
Auguste! Catch them crying about anything
short of mamma's or the governor's death!
They are evidently the sons of a gentleman, for
all that they chaff the conductor and play
monkey tricks with their money, and comport
themselves generally like young leopard cubs
turned into the likeness of two-footed
Christians for the time being. Had they been in the
country they would have been hunting rats
with old Dick Lawson the ratcatcher, or snaring
rabbits in the field below the spring-head, or
digging for moles in the croft, or shooting
young pheasants in the wood, or coaxing the
filly in the paddock, when not "shooing" and
frightening her into temporary insanity, or
doing a thousand and one of those uncatalogued
initiations into manhood which make boys so
detestable, and yet which are somehow right steps
toward a manly futurity. As it is, they expend
their superfluous energy in London by chaffing