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 



