and her child, and the bonne, now mount the
stairs. First, second, third, fourth flights;
again another, and at the fifth the bonne
unlocks the door, and the family enter.

It is an apartment of four pièces, or rooms,
inclusive of the kitchen, and exclusive of the
antichambre; a small vestibule without light,
where, if they want an additional room, the
servant is often put, to sleep, when not
domiciled in the kitchen. The rest of the suite is
composed of a salle à manger, a salon, one
bedroom, and a kitchen. This is a very common
partition of the upper stories in Parisian
houses, and goes under the name of a petit
appartement. The rooms are well furnished,
and the first thing which strikes the visitor
is the lightness of the general effect. The
window-curtains are of muslin, clean and
pure; they cost very little, yet they are
exceedingly elegant; there is no carpet, but
little round pieces, woven expressly for the
purpose, and placed before each chair, and a
few low footstools, or tabourets, do carpet
duty; and the floors are highly polished, and
generally of wood, worked diagonally. The
chairs, tables, and sofas are of beautiful shapes,
and the easy chairs are delightful. Flowers
grow in a jardinière in the window, and
cut bouquets are in vases on the table, and
on the chiffoniers, and, on each side of
the ormolu clock, which is sure to be in
the centre of the chimney-piece against the
mirror—for you may be certain of the mirror
over the fire-place: that is one of the great
facts of French furniture, never absent.
This is the salon. The dining-room is
more scantily furnished. The floor is of
hexagon-shaped tiles, and there is no
fireplace, but a stove instead, which is pretty
sure to smoke, and quite certain to stifle, without
warming you; and in summer, flowers
and flower-pots stand on the stove instead of
on the chimney-piece. There is a table, there are
some chairs, and two arm-chairs, a kind of
sideboard, and a clock—not so handsome as the
drawing-room clock, but still a clock. We
pass now to the bed-room, which opens into
the drawing-room. Indeed, we ought to have
given the description of the rooms as they
stand. First, the antichambre, which opens
into the dining-room; through the dining-
room is the salon, and through the salon, with
a door leading into the antichambre and facing
the kitchen, is the bed-room. The bedroom
is almost more tastefully arranged than the
salon, for the mistress spends chief part of
her in-door life here. The two beds are
close together, and very small; they stand
within a kind of alcove or recess, and
are almost entirely screened by white
curtains, bordered with pink, and tied up with
large pink rosettes, that hang before the recess.
The armoire, or wardrobe, is of mahogany,
and has large mirrored doors; and there
is a round glass, framed in muslin, tied up
also in pink, as in the days of Louis
Quatorze; and the dressing table, where it
stands is clothed in the like drapery. The
washing apparatus, we are bound in sorrowful
truth to say, is small and inefficient. A
skeleton tripod holds one baby basin for the
whole family, and the ewer is not much
larger than the milk-jug used for the coffee
at breakfast. The skeleton has two small
ribs; the upper one for the soap-dish, and
the lower one for a tooth-glass—rarely used;
but there are none of the luxurious addenda
of sponge-basin, nail-brush, dishes, &c. &c.,
which we have made necessities. We
cannot help wondering how the French
are able to make themselves even look
clean with such scanty provision for the
purpose. But, passing by that lean tripod, we
come to vases of artificial flowers, placed on
the table close by; to another clock, not quite
so handsome as the one in the drawing-room,
but very pretty, nevertheless; to a sofa, an
easy chair, a table covered with woman's
work, more rounds of carpet and circular
tabourets, and a second wardrobe, also with
glass doors, for Monsieur le Mari. This
completes the inventory of the bedroom, which
does service for the lady's boudoir as well.
The servant's room (when she does not sleep
in the antichambre) is up stairs, still higher;
and the child or children sleep with the
parents.

This is an exceedingly common style of
house arrangement in Paris, and is by no
means a despicable style. It secures a good
position and a respectable appearance, with
modest private accompaniments. It does not
stamp poverty with degradation, and force
the less wealthy to herd together in low
neighbourhoods, where house-rent is cheap
because houses are badly built and badly
situated. In such a house, barons and
marquises may live on the best floors, while
the other occupants graduate off, through the
well-to-do middle-classes, up to workpeople
in the attics ; the general arrangements being
public to the noble and the workman alike.
Small as this circumstance may seem, it is
one of the many causes which refine the
French workman and bring him into pleasant
brotherhood with the rich and high.

In an apartment such as we have described;
where all is simple, elegant, plain, and
thoroughly well-assorted; where there has
been very little expense and a great deal of
artistic taste in the choosing of the furniture;
our young wife begins her housekeeping,
when she does not live with the parents of
one or the other side, as often happens with
newly-married people, and which is indeed
the mode if the wife be young, as she
generally is. But the little woman we have
followed over the pavement of the Italians,
has earned herself the right of independence
now, by her motherhood; so she and her
husband, who is an employé in a government
office, have established themselves in their
present home, and have taken their stand as
one of the nuclei of society.