walk in the fine weather, sip his iced lemonade
and smoke his indifferent cigar outside
the Café de la Rotonde, hear the bubble of
the fountains, watch the pretty little children
at play, and if he be so minded, attempt a
platonic flirtation with one of the comely,
lace-capped Norman Bonnes. In wet weather
it supplies him with an unequalled promenade,
sheltered from the pattering rain, in the
shape of four magnificent arcades, where lie
may lounge, loaf, or flâner at his leisure,
among a well-dressed throng, apparently as
idle as himself ; admire the costly jewellery
in the shops, and the scarcely less sparkling
sham gems in the Hebrew bijoutiers' open
marts ; speculate on the coats, waistcoats,
and dressing-gowns of pattern and colour
astounding as their cheapness ; satiate
artistic longings with peeps at Sèvres and
Dresden porcelain, pâte tendre, vermeil,
Parian statuettes and Malachite caskets
train up his appetite in the way it should
by gazing at glowing panoramas of rare
eatables and drinkables displayed in the
larders of the great Restaurants, and in the
window of the immortal Chevet (shall the
glory of that great man ever be dimmed by
the rising constellation of his rivals Potel
and Chabot in the Rue Vivienne—never, I
hope) ; wonder how many thousands of francs
have been spent at Madame Prévost's flower
shops, how many of the donors of the two
louis bouquets are beggared now, and how
many of the recipients dead ; read the
playbills on the posts by the pleasant little Palais
Royal Theatre ; admire his own charms in
the pier-glasses of the Galerie de Valois ;
and see what there is new in literature at
the bookstalls where you may turn over
the yellow-covered volumes as long as you
like, even unto dog's-earing, and no man
importunes you, querulously to buy. And
in all seasons of the day or night and variations
of the weather, the Palais Royal is to
the traveller a great temple dedicated to
to Apicius and Lucullus, where, if his purse
be well lined, he may obtain the best breakfasts,
dinners, and wines in the world.

But Doctor Louis Véron, Burgess of Paris,
shows us quite a different Palais Royal. He
remembers the old days of the first empire;
when General Daumesnil gave an oyster
breakfast to all the officers of the garrison of
Vincennes in the cellars of the Frères Rovenaux;
on which occasion this underground
banqueting hall was brilliantly illuminated,
and every wine-bin was surmounted by a
scutcheon bearing the name of the year and
the vintage of each wine, and when, it is
almost needless to say, the officers of the
garrison of Vincennes drank of every year and
of every vintage, and drank much deeper
than the cellars they were in. The doctor
recollects when, on official fête days and
rejoicings for victories, there were scrambles in
the Palais-Royal Gardens among the mob for
sausages, loaves, and roast turkeys (the
traditions of these edible scrambles existed even
unto the advent of empire number two), and
when wine was served out indiscriminately
from hogsheads and buckets placed on
scaffolds, defended from the too-ardent irruption
of the thirsty souls of Paris by the Forts de
la Halle (market porters), with their arms
braced together. He brings back memories
of the famous military Palais Royal cafés,
where the emperor's braves trailed their long
swords, clanged their long spurs, twisted
their long mustachios, called the civilian
" Pekin," and threatened to cut off his
ears. Often has the doctor—no doctor
then, but a smock-faced youth—peeped with
awe, admiration, and envy into one of these
abodes of glory, and seen the sons of Mars
sitting round a bowl of burning punch,
whose bluish flame was kept up with as
much assiduity as though it had been the
sacred fire of the vestals, and drinking
confusion to the Austrian Eagle and death to
he English Leopard. He remembers the
great gourmand M. d'Aigrefeuille, who
almost invariably dined with the as great
gourmand the Archichancellor Cambacérès,
and as invariably over-ate himself; then,
taking a digestive walk in the Palais Royal,
would stop before the Café de Foy, and make
a particularly significant bow, which the
cunning waiter within understanding full
well, a servitor would presently emerge from
the café and bring the gastric-dolorous
gourmet a glass of iced water. The doctor
recollects the shop of the famous military
bootmaker Sakowsky, he who furnished the
hero of the snow-white plume—the gay and
gallant Murat—with his gold-tasselled
Hessians of scarlet morocco; and he remembers
the equally renowned magasin of Berchut, who
proudly designated himself Tailor to all the
Marshals of France. And, above all, can the
doctor call to mind those fatal timber-roofed
passages of the Palais Royal, the ominous
Galerie de Bois, which were run up in haste
during the Reign of Terror on the site of the
stables of the Orleans family, but which
existed for more than twenty years afterwards,
the haunt of all that was beautiful
and wicked, gay and depraved, criminal and
frivolous, in Paris.

It has often occurred to me that there is
a condition and period of Parisian life about
which we know very little more than we
do of the interior of Japan. I mean the
Paris of the first Napoleon: its habits and
manners. We have accurate pictures of
the Ancien Régime, of the Terror, of the
Restoration, of the Monarchy of July; and
since then the Paris correspondence of every
newspaper has kept us au fait with the
minutest doings of the gay capital of
civilisation. But that long stern war which
lasted from eighteen hundred and two till
eighteen hundred and fifteen, that deadly
mutual hatred of French and English, that
rigorous blockade, that maleficent continental