A GLIMPSE OF FRANCE. 213 



quite at home, and do not, shoulder to shoulder, and 

 in solid lines, make a dead set at the play and the 

 music. The theatre has warm hangings, warm col- 

 ors, cozy boxes and stalls, and is in no sense the pub- 

 lic, away-from-home place we are so familiar with in 

 this country. Again, one might know it was Paris by 

 the character of the prints and pictures in the shop- 

 windows; they are so clever, as art, one becomes 

 reprehensibly 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 revolution), 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 ap- 

 proves with tone and look. It is a foolish charge, 

 often made, that the French make vice attractive ; 

 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, ar- 

 rayed like great rose-leaves, with a green sprig or 

 two of parsley dropped upon it, and surrounded by a 

 border of calves-foot jelly, like a setting of crystals. 



