qU ARTIER LATIN IT I ES 55 



Ethel's mother the completion of the antagonism and 

 strangeness of all things. 



The Rue de la Gaiete overflows at one end into an 

 open-air market of vegetables and flowers, and some- 

 times, as to-day, of singing birds, poultry, and brood- 

 ing families of cats. Should the passer-by cast so 

 much as an eye upon these, he falls into the toils of 

 the market-people. They press the cats to their 

 bosoms, extolling their probity, their cleanliness, their 

 race ; each has been in its turn the happiness, the day- 

 star, of some lonely hearth, but to Madame they 

 will sacrifice their treasure for ten francs. Madame 

 remains unmoved, and they fling aside the domestic 

 treasures and snatch the birds out of their cages ; 

 they bring out more cages, and yet more birds. They 

 hurl these aside in their turn, and unearth crates of 

 seemingly moribund tortoises ; so that the victim, 

 weakened by seeing what huge trouble has been taken 

 on her account, finally falls, and possibly embitters 

 her future life by the purchase of a tortoise. 



But at present there is immunity; the market 

 breakfasts. A little girl of eleven, sitting alone at 

 a table with a bottle of claret on it, turns with a 

 bulging cheek to eulogise her chickens, but she does 

 not follow it up. She is breakfasting and is reading 

 her newspaper, so that business takes an inferior 

 place. Has not a Parisian gentleman of the shop- 

 keeping class murdered his wife, from motives of 

 jealousy, and are not five columns of the paper devoted 

 to it ? Is not the rival most probably described as a 

 brave or a great gargon aux grands yeux bleus, and 

 his sobs recorded with a sympathetic hand ? The 

 French Ministry may change like a kaleidoscope, 

 England and France may tread upon each other's 

 toes in Central Africa, but these things are disposed 

 of with a few patriotic shrieks in half a column. 



