AN OCTOBER ABROAD 193 



dead set at the play and the music. The theatre 

 has warm hangings, warm colors, cosy boxes and 

 stalls, and is in no sense the public, away-from- 

 home place we are so familiar with in this country. 

 Again, one might know it was Paris by the charac 

 ter of the prints and pictures in the shop windows; 

 they are so clever as art, one becomes reprehensi- 

 bly indifferent to their license. Whatever sins the 

 French may be guilty of, they never sin against art 

 and good taste (except when in the frenzy of revo 

 lution), and, if Propriety is sometimes obliged to 

 cry out "For shame!" in the French capital, she 

 must do so with ill-concealed admiration, like a 

 fond mother chiding with word and gesture while 

 she approves with tone and look. It is a foolish 

 charge, often made, that the French make vice at 

 tractive: they make it provocative of laughter; the 

 spark of wit is always evolved, and what is a better 

 antidote to this kind of poison than mirth? 



They carry their wit even into their cuisine. 

 Every dish set before you at the table is a picture, 

 and tickles your eye before it does your palate. 

 When I ordered fried eggs, they were brought on a 

 snow-white napkin, which was artistically folded 

 upon a piece of ornamented tissue-paper that covered 

 a china plate; if I asked for cold ham, it came in 

 flakes, arrayed like great rose-leaves, with a green 

 sprig or two of parsley dropped upon it, and sur 

 rounded by a border of calves-foot jelly, like a set 

 ting of crystals. The bread revealed new quali 

 ties in the wheat, it was so sweet and nutty; and 



