said in reply-but then they always pointed-they always did that, and we bowed politely and said "Merci, Monsieur," and so it was a blighting triumph over the disaffected member, POINTING. any way. He was restive under "Well, I wish they were educated enough to tell a man a direction that goes some where— for we've been going around in a circle for an hour-I've passed this same old drug store seven times." We said it was a low, disreputable falsehood, (but we knew it was not.) It was plain that it would not do to pass that drug store again, though--we might go on asking directions, but we must cease from following finger-pointings if we hoped to check the suspicions of the disaffected member. A long walk through smooth, asphaltum-paved streets bordered by blocks of vast new mercantile houses of cream-colored stone, every house and every block precisely like all the other houses and all the other blocks for a mile, and all brilliantly lighted, brought us at last to the principal thoroughfare. On every hand were bright colors, flashing constellations of gasburners, gaily dressed men and women thronging the sidewalks-hurry, life, activity, cheerfulness, conversation and laughter every where! We found the Grand Hotel du Louvre et de la Paix, and wrote down who we were, where we were born, what our occupations were, the place we came from last, whether we were married or single, how we liked it, how old we were, where we were bound for and when we expected to A FRENCHY SCENE. 97 get there, and a great deal of information of similar importance-all for the benefit of the landlord and the secret police. We hired a guide and began the business of sight-seeing immediately. That first night on French soil was a stirring one. I can not think of half the places we went to, or what we particularly saw; we had no disposition to examine carefully into any thing at all-we only wanted to glance and go-to move, keep moving! The spirit of the country was upon us. We sat down, finally, at a late hour, in the great Casino, and called for unstinted champagne. It is so easy to be bloated aristocrats where it costs nothing of consequence! There were about five hundred people in that dazzling place, I suppose, though the walls being papered entirely with mirrors, so to speak, one could not really tell but that there were a hundred thousand. Young, daintily dressed exquisites and young, stylishly dressed women, and also old gentlemen and old ladies, sat in couples and groups about innumerable marble-topped tables, and ate fancy suppers, drank wine and kept up a chattering din of conversation that was dazing to the senses. There was a stage at the far end, and a large orchestra; and every now and then actors and actresses in preposterous comic dresses came out and sang the most extravagantly funny songs, to judge by their absurd actions; but that audience merely suspended its chatter, stared cynically, and never once smiled, never once applauded! I had always thought that Frenchmen were ready to laugh at any thing. 7 CHAPTER XI. WE are getting foreignized rapidly, and with facility. We are getting reconciled to halls and bed-chambers with unhomelike stone floors, and no carpets-floors that ring to the tread of one's heels with a sharpness that is death to sentimental musing. We are getting used to tidy, noiseless waiters, who glide hither and thither, and hover about your back and your elbows like butterflies, quick to comprehend orders, quick to fill them; thankful for a gratuity without regard to the amount; and always polite-never otherwise than polite. That is the strangest curiosity yet-a really polite hotel waiter who isn't an idiot. We are getting used to driving right into the central court of the hotel, in the midst of a fragrant circle of vines and flowers, and in the midst, also, of parties of gentlemen sitting quietly reading the paper and smoking. We are getting used to ice frozen by artificial process in ordinary bottles-the only kind of ice they have here. We are getting used to all these things; but we are not getting used to carrying our own soap. We are sufficiently civilized to carry our own combs and tooth-brushes; but this thing of having to ring for soap every time we wash is new to us, and not pleasant at all. We think of it just after we get our heads and faces thoroughly wet, or just when we think we have been in the bath-tub long enough, and then, of course, an annoying delay follows. These Marseillaise make Marseillaise hymns, and Marseilles vests, and Marseilles soap for all the world; but they never sing their hymns, or wear their vests, or wash with their soap themselves. RINGING FOR SOAP. 99 We have learned to go through the lingering routine of the table d'hote with patience, with serenity, with satisfaction. We take soup; then wait a few minutes for the fish; a few change and take every course, of course, being in France. With such a cargo on board, digestion is a slow process, and we must sit long in the cool chambers and smoke-and read French newspapers, which have a strange fashion of telling a perfectly straight story till you get to the "nub" of it, and then a word drops in that no man can translate, and that story is ruined. An embankment fell on some Frenchmen yesterday, and the papers are full of it to-day-but whether those sufferers were killed, or crippled, or bruised, or only scared, is more than I can possibly make out, and yet I would just give any thing to know. We were troubled a little at dinner to-day, by the conduct of an American, who talked very loudly and coarsely, and laughed boisterously where all others were so quiet and wellbehaved. He ordered wine with a royal flourish, and said: 100 "AN AMERICAN, SIR!" "I never dine without wine, sir," (which was a pitiful falsehood,) and looked around upon the company to bask in the admiration he expected to find in their faces. All these airs in a land where they would WINE, SIR! as soon expect to leave the soup out of the bill of fare as the wine!-in a land where wine is nearly as common among all ranks as water! This fellow said: "I am a free-born sovereign, sir, an American, sir, and I want every body to know it!" He did not mention that he was a lineal descendant of Balaam's ass; but every body knew that without his telling it. We have driven in the Prado-that superb avenue bordered with patrician mansions and noble shade-trees-and have visited the Chateau Boarely and its curious museum. They showed us a miniature cemetery there a copy of the first graveyard that was ever in Marseilles, no doubt. The delicate little skeletons were lying in broken vaults, and had their household gods and kitchen utensils with them. The original of this cemetery was dug up in the principal street of the city a few years ago. It had remained there, only twelve feet under ground, for a matter of twenty-five hundred years, or thereabouts. Romulus was here before he built Rome, and thought something of founding a city on this spot, but gave up the idea. He may have been personally acquainted with some of these Phoenicians whose skeletons we have been examining. In the great Zoological Gardens, we found specimens of all the animals the world produces, I think, including a dromedary, a monkey ornamented with tufts of brilliant blue and |