She has a rabid reverence for the memory of
the emperor; and, I am certain, must have
belonged to the grand army, for she has the
voice of a grenadier, and the walk of a
sapper and miner, and swears like a trooper.
I would rather not say anything more about
her, here, for on a disputed question of
reckoning once, she pursued me with a stew-pan,
and she is a formidable person for a
nervous man to deal with.

At the door of our house stands, night and
day, a little fellow about four feet seven
inches high, with a terrific moustache, and
clad in a greyish blue coat, brickdust-coloured
trousers, gaiters instead of stockings, a black
leathern belt round his waist, and a knapsack
covered with something resembling the
piebald top of a travelling trunk. He carries a
musket and bayonet much taller than himself,
and is full private in the hundred and fiftieth
regiment of the line. It is not through any
special merit or respectability possessed by
our house that he is here stationed, but simply
because in the first floor lives M. le colonel
de la Gamelle, commanding the hundred and
fiftieth, whose right it is to have a sentry at
his door.

The colonel is a stout, a very stout warrior,
with grey whiskers and moustaches, and a
wife who always puts me in mind of the
giraffe at the Jardin des Plantes, for she has a
meek eye, a distressingly long neck, and
persists in wearing a yellow dress with crimson
spots. They have one son, who is at the
Lycée Louis le Grand now, and wears a
semi-military uniform. He was born in Algeria,
and nursed by a soldier's wife. He comes
home on Sundays, when his father gives him
lessons in fencing, and in the broad-sword
exercise; and, in the evening, takes him to
the café to play billiards or dominoes. When
he is old enough he will go to the school of
St. Cyr, or to the Polytechnic. His career is
marked out plain enough. Born and bred,
he will probably die in the purlieus of a
barrack—the roll of drums in his ears, and
harness on his back. As for the colonel, he
rose from the ranks, and tells you so. Why
should he be ashamed of being what Soult or
Ney were, and what Bedeau and Reille have
been? Also his language savours a little of
the guard-room, and he spits and swears a
little too frequently in company. He is quite
a different sort of colonel to the commanding
officer of one of our regiments. He has
neither cab nor tiger. He has his horse (found
by the Government), but I doubt whether he
knows the favourite for the next Chantilly
cup, or has made up a book on the Versailles
steeple-chase. He is uneasy in plain clothes,
which, to the British warrior, are garments
of delight. He lives on his pay; and, not
having anything beside it to live on, does not
eke out a supplementary income by betting,
kite-flying, or horse-dealing. He knows
every man in his regiment by name, and stops
to speak to his privates in the streets, and
rates them soundly if he finds them slovenly,
or frequenting the wine-shop immoderately.
They call him "notre colonel" and the kindly
familiarity he entertains with them does not
breed contempt, but rather love and
affectionate respect. Yet I am bound to add that
colonel de la Gamelle is not, what we in
England call, a gentleman. He is rough,
boorish, and often brutal in his manners; he
smokes a short pipe in his drawing-room; and
his only relaxation is the café where, with
other colonels, lieutenant-colonels, and majors,
he plays innumerable pools at billiards for
drops of brandy, just as the captains do in
their cafés, and the lieutenants and
sous-lieutenants in theirs. As for Madame, his wife,
she is of a meek and somewhat lachrymose
temperament, and reclines all day on a sofa,
reading the novels of the admired M.de Balzac.
She is perfectly contented with her husband,
whom she scarcely ever sees, but who always
leaves her a touching souvenir in the shape of
stale tobacco- smoke, which she bears with
patience. The colonel's swords, kepis, burnouses,
shabragues, Algerian pipes, camel-saddles,
guard-papers, boots, and dressing-gowns, are
strewed about the apartments in loving
confusion with her caps, shoes, and paper-covered
novels. She has a femme-de-chambre,
Mademoiselle Reine, who has already refused a
drum-major, but is suspected of a tenderness
for one of the light company, who is attached
to the colonel in the capacity of body-servant,
and is eternally brushing a uniform coat in
the yard, on a temporary gibbet formed of
two broom-handles.

On the same floor as the colonel, but in a
much larger suite of apartments, lives M.
Ulysse de Saint-Flamm, forty-five years of age,
decorated, wearing a white neckcloth, and
living at the rate of fifty thousand francs per
annum, which is a pretty high figure to exist
on in Paris. Were a census paper to be sent
to him, I doubt whether he would not be
puzzled as to what to describe himself. He
is not a man of independent fortune, for he
works like a carthorse. He is not a
stock-broker, though he is every day on the Bourse,
frantic with financial combinations, bursting
with bargains. He is certainly not a
shop-keeper, nor is he a merchant. He does not
discount bills, though he is up to his neck in
stamped paper at various dates. He does not
borrow money, for he is always borrowing
prodigious sums. He does not live by the
play-table, for he spends half his gains there.
He is one of those financial anomalies to which
the revolution of 1830 gave birth—a walking
incarnation of agistage, shares, dividends, and
per centage. He is a projector—a speculator.
He is on a great scale (and avoiding the
Court of Assize) what the immortal Robert
Macaire was; what the admirable
Mercadet, of De Balzac (put into an excellent
English dress in the "Game of Speculation"),
was; what hundreds of eager, bustling, astute,
unprincipled, successful men, are this moment