female servants, dressmakers, and ironers or
getters-up of fine linen. Often do they
deserve the rebuke of the ant to the grasshopper,
"If you sing and play all summer,
you must starve in winter." Every domestic
necessarily expects to be spared to go to his
or her ducasse. If you are dying, or dead, it
is all the same, unless you happen to have
married servants. The pecuniary and legal
ties which bind servant to master in France,
are much lighter than in England. Here
(where our ducasse is held) servants are hired
only by the month. Any longer engagement
is binding on no one. A maid servant can
leave you capriciously at a moment's warning,
and you must pay her her wages up to the
day; but, if you send her away capriciously,
without some serious fault which a juge-de-paix
will consider such, you must pay her
wages to the end of the month. Many a
domestic throws herself out of place, because
she will go to her ducasse whether it suits
your pleasure or not; and many a family
shift as they can without a domestic for days
together, because their bonne when she comes
back will have had her ducasse over, whereas
they might hire a new one whose ducasse is
yet to come. There are even bonnes who
have the face to want to go, and who succeed
in going, to all the ducasses of all their uncles,
of their brothers' wives' aunts, and of their
second cousins-in-law. The length of line is
not very determinable, which a sportive
young salmon will run off your reel. The
connexion between the fish and the rod and
between the maid and her mistress is often
thus broken with a sudden snap. Notwithstanding
which ducasse-temptations and the
brief engagement from month to month, we have
domestic servants who serve the same masters
year after year, without desiring change.
But, scoldings, cold haughtiness, inhuman
distance, and over-exaction of the minutiae of
service, are not the bonds which have made
such attachments lasting. French men and
women will hardly bear to be treated as
English servants often are, much less like
Russian serfs. A French servant will do
much for an even-tempered master, who
behaves to him as if he were a fellow creature,
who never brutalises his inferiors in rank,
and from whom he may hope for some little
protection, or patronage, or friendly remembrance
by and by. From one of an opposite
character he will escape like a wild hawk let
loose, unless chained to the spot by the most
abject poverty. A curious collection of anecdotes
might be formed, relating how French
domestics and Russian employers have got on
together.

But, at our ducasse there is no lack of
bonnes. The punishment would be to send
them home to their rural wildernesses at that
particular epoch. They might rebel, and
refuse to go. Ducasse-day is almost always
Sunday, with the one, two, or three succeeding
days, as the case may be. On a Sunday likewise
ours begins, though there are premonitory
symptoms days beforehand. To inaugurate
the gala, the streets are strewn—not
with flowers, green leaves, or rushes, but
with the shells of a countless number of eggs,
which the hens of the neighbourhood have
been under strictest orders to lay for the last
six weeks, for the fabrication of tartes and
gâteaux. A tarte is an inferior sort of
custard, of mighty dimensions, and "round
as my shield;" a gâteau is a dryish sort of
fancy bread, without plums or currants or
anything, and which sticks in your throat,
compelling you to sluice it down with the
first fluid that comes to hand. But tartes and
gâteaux, gâteaux and tartes, are as inevitable
throughout our whole ducasse-constellation
as are maids of honour at an excursion to
Richmond.

Be it known that part of the domestic furniture
of every household is a tricolor flag.
There are occasions when every tenement
be-flags itself—such as the fall of Sebastopol,
the signature of peace in March last, and the
Fête Napoléon (the fifteenth of August). We
ourselves sport a couple of flags, a French
and an English one side by side, of exactly
equal dimensions and at the same elevation,
to avoid causing jealousy or the slightest
pretext for quarrel between the two cordial
allies. On ducasse-day number one, a silken
tricolor, is displayed at the town-hall balcony,
and then all who think fit, unfurl their colours.
The square is covered with round-abouts,
peep-shows, toy-stalls, and other accompaniments
of a pleasure-fair; for, our souls are
far above business thoughts. At all ducasses
there is gambling on a small scale—the
merest trifle is gambled for. Instead of
buying his two-sous'-worth of gingerbread in
a plain, prosaic, mercantile way, a mere child
will put down his penny stake on the board,
and set revolving a long iron-pin like the
needle of an enormous compass, on the chance
that, when it ceases to spin, it will point to a
large loaf of gingerbread placed somewhere
N.N.W., the needle being warranted to stop
at S.S.E. On the Monday (which is one of
our notable specialities—I still hold the
grand one in reserve), distinguished visitors
flock in from all points of the compass to
our ball. There are throngs of what we call
delicious toilettes; our noblesse even make
their appearance, the younger members
sometimes joining the dance; and yet the bal
champêtre opens at six o'clock, and the
entrance-tickets cost the ruinous price of half
a franc. All these and other similar gatherings
are honoured by the presence of one or
more gendarmes in full costume: not for the
purpose of intimidation, but as a sanction
and a protection afforded by the laws supreme.
Certainly, if any one misbehaves himself, he
very soon finds himself outside the gates of
paradise. At ten, or before, the high society
retires, and the little world have it all to
themselves. Students of varied styles of