PARIS covers an area of thirty square miles, has five hundred and thirty miles of public streets, and has a resident population of nearly two millions, all engaged in trading in articles of luxury for the rest of the world. It supports about one hundred and fifteen thousand paupers. Its religion is a very mild form of Catholicism tinged with infidelity, or infidelity flavored with Catholicism, as you choose. Which flavor predominates in the average Parisian I have not been able to determine. I should say Catholicism Sunday forenoon, and infidelity the remainder of the week. At all events, the cafÉs are always crowded, while the churches never are, except by strangers, who go religiously and devoutly thither—to see the buildings and the decorations. The Parisian generally puts off going to church till next Sunday, and goes this Sunday to the country instead. One-fourth of the births are illegitimate, which is doing very well for Paris.

The city consumes annually eighty-six millions gallons of wine, and three millions five hundred thousand gallons of spirits; the latter going very largely into the seasoned stomachs of foreigners, the French themselves being altogether too acute to use anything of the kind. However, they are very willing to sell it, and welcome the Englishman or American with hospitable hands to drunkards’ graves—if they have the money to pay for it—with great politeness and suavity.

I have not yet been in any country which did not extend a hearty welcome to any stranger with money.

About ninety-five millions of gallons of water per day come from the water-works, which is mostly used in keeping the streets clean. I have not yet seen a Frenchman who ever used any as a beverage or on his person. For economy he mixes some of it with his wine, and his ablutions may require a pint or such matter a day, but that is all the use he has for water.

The very first thing that strikes an American in Paris with astonishment is the meagreness of the water supply in the houses. You look for the faucets which supply your room with hot and cold water, as at home, but you don’t find them. A chambermaid pours out about two quarts in a diminutive pitcher, and that is expected to last you for purposes of ablution twenty-four hours. And this with the Seine running directly through the center of the city. The houses are from five to seven stories high, but all the water used in them, for all purposes, is carted up to the top by men. My landlord told me it was cheaper to have it so carried than to put plumbing in his house, and pay the water-tax, “and we don’t use much of it, anyway,” he remarked, and he was right. Still, accustomed as I have always been to the use of a great deal of it, it took me some time to fall into their ways. Pure water is a very good thing to have plenty of, but it’s all a matter of habit, I suppose. A man can get to be a Frenchman, in time, if he tries hard enough. Nothing is impossible, where there’s a will and a stubborn purpose. But to keep oneself clean with a pint, or thereabouts, of water per day looks rather difficult to a novice.

John Leech was very fond of illustrating this peculiarity of the French people, in Punch, years ago. When the first English Exposition was in progress in London, the city was overrun with French. One picture he made was of two elegantly dressed young Frenchmen, standing in front of an ordinary wash-stand, on which was the usual pitcher, washbowl, soap-dish, etc., and underneath was this conversation:—

Alphonse—What is this?

Henri—I do not know. It is queer!

The good Leech doubtless exaggerated, as all satirists do, but he had sufficient foundation for his skit.

But whatever may be the condition of the French, man or woman, interiorally, the outside is as delightfully clean as could be desired. The blouse of the workman is outwardly as fresh and clean as the coat of the swell on the boulevards, and the said swell would sooner lie down and die than to wear soiled linen or uncleaned boots. The women, high and low, are invariably neat and tidy in appearance—immaculately so.

The chambermaid, who cares for your room; the washerwoman who brings you your linen; equally with my lady in her drawing room or in her carriage, is neatness itself, and not only that, but elegance itself. Condition is no excuse for outward slovenliness in Paris. The servants in the house always have white about the throat and wrist, and it is white. And then their dresses are made with some degree of taste, and are worn in such a way as to make the cheapest and most common goods attractive. With the same eye to appearance, and with the devotion to comfort that is a part of French nature, the streets of Paris are the best kept in the world. I do not wonder that the Frenchman, condemned by business or other considerations to live in New York, considers himself a sort of Napoleon, after Waterloo, and New York his St. Helena. The streets of London are kept clean; the dirt from the throngs of horses and vehicles is carefully removed, and it is done thoroughly, but not so much because of cleanliness as for want of manure. The streets of Paris are kept absolutely clean, simply for comfort and appearance. The neatly polished boots of Monsieur and Madame must not be soiled on crossings, nor must the skirts of its women be made unwearable by dragging through dust and filth. The streets of New York would send a French woman to a mad-house—they are nasty enough to send any one there compelled to wade through them.

There are no people in the world who are so delightfully polite as the Parisians. I might say the French, but Paris is

France, and it is the same all over the country. It is a delight to be swindled by a French shopkeeper, man or woman, they do it so neatly and with such infinite grace. There is so much patience, so much suavity, such a general oiling of the rough places, and such a delightful smoothing out of creases. It is Monsieur who is the obliged party if you come into his place. He feels the honor that you have conferred upon him, and he makes you feel that he feels it. True, you pay for all this politeness, and pay for it at very high rates, but it is, like all high-priced commodities, very pleasant.

He never wearies of showing you goods; your atrocious French is laboriously translated, and if you buy a franc’s worth Monsieur seems as much delighted as though you had beggared yourself by taking his whole stock. And if you have taken an hour of his time and purchased nothing, he seems to be even more pleased. Indeed, his politeness on occasions that to an English or American tradesman would be depressing, is even more marked. He bows and smiles, not grimaces, as has been vainly written, but a most gracious bow and a most delightful smile, which, if not genuine, is a most natural substitute for it, and he modestly hopes that if Monsieur or Madame desires anything in his line that they will give him the preference. Possibly he says “sacre” to himself after you are on the sidewalk, and possibly he launches all sorts of curses after you, but you don’t know it, and so it doesn’t hurt you. Go back within five minutes and you will find him with the same smile, ready and willing to go through the same operation over again.

Tibbitts tried to worry one of them, and for once succeeded. He stopped the party promenading with him on the Boulevard des Italiens, at a jeweler’s, who displayed in his window the legend, “English spoken.” The “English spoken” in the shops is good enough, as a rule, to explain the nature and quality of the goods, and that is all. Further than this, the English-speaking salesman has no more idea of English than he has of Ashantee. Tibbitts marched in boldly, and the English-speaking man appeared. He was a very well-preserved, bald-headed man of fifty, and at him Tibbitts went.

“Do you speak English?”

“Oui—yees, Monsieur.”

Tibbitts grasped his hand enthusiastically.

“It’s refreshing to meet one in a strange land who can speak one’s own language.”

“Yees, Monsieur.”

“Well, what I want to know is, is the Chicago & Northwestern Railroad cutting rates the same as the other roads, and do they cut for Western-bound passengers the same as for Eastern, and have you the remotest idea that the cutting will be kept up till September when I return, and does the Pullman Sleeping Car Company cut the same as the railroad companies?”

“Eh, Monsieur? Zeese watches—”

“You don’t quite understand me. You see the Pullman Sleeping Car Company is quite distinct from the railroad companies, and one may cut rates without the other. See? Now what I want to know is—”

The bewildered Frenchman who spoke English stared in a wild sort of way, but his politeness did not desert him.

“Ees eet ze watch, ze diamond, ze—”

“Not yet. What I want to know is, who is this Lapham and Miller who have been elected to fill the vacancies occasioned by the resignations of Platt and Conkling, and is Miller going to be a tail to Lapham’s kite, or are they both square, bang-up men, and—”

“Will Monsieur look at ze goods?”

“No, no! Is the Chicago & Northwestern in this row?”

By this time the Frenchman was out of patience.

“Monsieur, talks—wat you call ’im—gibberish. I ’ave not ze time to waste. Eef it ees ze watch—”

“Sir,” replies Tibbitts, severely, “when you announce ‘English spoken,’ you should speak English, or at least understand it. Good morning, or, as you don’t understand the plainest English, bong-swoir.”

He had succeeded this time, and should have rested on his laurels. But Tibbittses, alas, always overdo what they undertake. He had extracted so much amusement from his first experiment that he tried it over again the next day. He entered a similar place and commenced the same thing.

“What I want to know, is the Chicago & Northwestern in the railroad war, and do you suppose the cutting of rates will continue till September, when I return, and—”

“Indeed I cannot tell you, sir. It is something I do not keep the run of. You had better apply at the American Exchange, or the Herald office.”

This in the best and clearest American English. Poor Tibbitts had fallen upon a bright American who was turning his knowledge of French to account by serving as a salesman in Paris. He smiled a ghastly smile as he bowed himself out of the place. Bad marksmen who by chance hit the bull’s eye, should be very modest and refuse to shoot again. Even Napoleon, great as he was, fought one battle too many.

Politeness with the French is a matter of education as well as nature. The French child is taught that lesson from the beginning of its existence, and it is made a part of its life. It is the one thing that is never forgotten and lack of it is never forgiven. A shipwrecked Frenchman who could not get into a boat, as he was disappearing under the waves, raised his hat, and with such a bow as he could make under the circumstances, said, “Adieu, Mesdames; Adieu, Messieurs,” and went to the fishes. I doubt not that it really occurred, for I have seen ladies splashed by a cab on a rainy day, smile politely at the driver. A race that has women of that degree of politeness can never be anything but polite. When such exasperation as splashed skirts and stockings will not ruffle them, nothing will.

The children are delightful in this particular. French children do not go about clamoring for the best places and sulking if they do not get them, and talking in a rude, boisterous way. They do not take favors and attentions as a matter of course and unacknowledged. The slightest attention shown them is acknowledged by the sweetest kind of a bow—not the dancing-master’s bow, but a genuine one—and the invariable “Merci, Monsieur!” or Madame, or Mademoiselle, as the case may be.

I was in a compartment with a little French boy of twelve, the precise age at which American children, as a rule, deserve killing for their rudeness and general disagreeableness. He was dressed faultlessly, but his clothes were not the chief charm. I sat between him and the open window, and he was eating pears. Now an American boy of that age would either have dropped the cores upon the floor, or tossed them out of the window without a word to anybody. But this small gentleman every time, with a “permit me, Monsieur,” said in the most pleasant way, rose and came to the window and dropped them out, and then, “Merci, Monsieur,” as he quietly took his seat. It was a delight. I am sorry to say that such small boys do not travel on American railroad trains to any alarming extent. Would they were more frequent.

And when in his seat, if an elderly person or any one else came in, he was the very first to rise and offer his place if it were in the slightest degree more comfortable than the one vacant, and the good nature in which he insisted upon the new comer taking it was something “altogether too sweet for anything,” as the faro bankeress would say.

And this boy was no exception. He was not a show boy, out posing before the great American republic, or such of it as happened to be in France at the time, but he was a sample, a perfect type of the regulation French child. I have seen just as much politeness in the ragged waifs in the Faubourg St. Antoine, where the child never saw the blue sky more than the little patches that could be seen over the tops of seven-storied houses, as I ever did in the Champs ElysÉes. One Sunday at St. Cloud, where the ragged children of poverty are taken by their mothers for air and light, it was a delight to fill the pockets with sweets to give them. They had no money to buy, and the little human rats looked longingly at the riches of the candy stands, and a sou’s worth made the difference between perfect happiness and half-pleasure. You gave them the sou’s worth, and what a glad smile came to the lips, and accompanied with it was the delicious half bow and half courtesy, and invariable “Merci, Monsieur.” One little tot, who could not speak, filled her tiny mouth with the unheard of delicacies she had received, and, too young to say “Merci,” put up her lips to be kissed.

Tibbitts gave some confectionery to her elder sister, a young girl of eighteen, but she merely said “Merci, Monsieur,” and that was all. She took the candy, but declined to kiss him, much to Tibbitts’ disgust.

Oh, ye thoughtless, heedless mothers of America, would that you could all see these children and take lessons from their mothers. There is a difference in people, and a still greater difference in children. Our American Congress could well afford a commission of ladies to learn the secret of training children, and a school for mothers should be established in every city for their preparation for this important duty. It would pay better than any monetary conference.

The French family is an unknown quantity. Monsieur, the husband and father, spends his time at his cafÉ according to his quality, while Madame the wife receives her friends, or admirers, if she be not too old to have them, in her drawing-room. There are no homes in France, as the English and Americans understand the word. It would drive a Frenchman crazy if, when business hours are over, he should be compelled to eat his dinner and afterward go up stairs, sit with his wife and children quietly till bed-time, and then retire in good order. Likewise would it be distasteful to the French wife. She may be in love—in fact, she always is—but not with her husband.

A Frenchman once, who was too fond of the softer sex, pledged himself to avoid women. Later he was asked if he had kept his pledge. “Certainly, or rather partially. I have religiously avoided Madame; I can keep that pledge always, so far as she is concerned.”

He meets his wife with, “Good evening, Madame. I trust you have had a pleasant day.”

“Merci, Monsieur; very pleasant.”

He does not ask her whether she has been driving out with the children, or with a lover; in fact, he does not care. He knows she has a lover, but that is nothing to him so long as he himself sees nothing wrong.

And after dinner he bids her “Good evening,” and goes to his favorite cafÉ, where he, and other similar husbands, save the country over innumerable bottles of wine, and when the cafÉs are shut, and there is no other earthly place to visit, he goes home and retires to his room, only to meet Madame the next morning at breakfast.

This is not singular. The French girl is kept by her mother under the strictest possible guardianship till she is of the age to marry. She might as well be in a prison, for she is never out from under the sharp eye of her mother, or aunt, or in default of these, a governess. Her life, when she gets to be about fourteen, and begins to know something of what life really is, and wants to enjoy it, is most intolerable.

She is married in due time, but she has very little to do with it. A husband is selected for her, and she accepts him scarcely knowing or hardly caring who it is she is to wed, for she wants that liberty which in France comes with marriage, and marriage only. She knows that a wife may do that which a maiden may not—that matrimony means in France what it does not in any other country—almost absolute freedom. Once married, the mother washes her hands of her, considering that she has discharged her whole duty by her child.

The whole idea of French matrimony from the girl’s standpoint is well illustrated in the picture of the French caricaturist. Two girls are discussing the approaching marriage of one of them. The bargained-for girl exclaims lugubriously, “But I love Henri!” “Very good, my child,” replies her elder and wiser friend, “you love Henri; then marry Alphonse.”

Her marrying Alphonse made love for Henri possible. It was all there in one small picture and two lines of print, but a page of small type could not explain the situation more clearly.

Marriages are arranged by the parents of the parties, and an exceedingly curious performance it is. The girl’s parents actually buy her a husband. The two old cats who have one a son and the other a daughter, meet like two gray-headed diplomatists, and there ensues a series of negotiations that would put to shame traders in anything else. The girl has to have a dot, which is to say, a dowry, and the son must have money or property settled upon him. The mother of the girl proposes to give her one hundred thousand francs as the dot. The mother of the son insists that it is not enough, and enlarges upon the perfections of the young man. He is educated, he is polished, he is handsome, he is amiable. He isn’t a brute who would make a wife miserable; not he. Clearly one hundred thousand francs is not enough for such a paragon. The mother of the girl strikes in. The girl is the handsomest in Paris, and has had every advantage. She is a lady, and would make a desirable addition to the house of any man in Paris; but finally she names one hundred and ten thousand francs.

It will not do. “Mon dieu!” exclaims the mother, “you must remember I have three other daughters to provide for, and the estate is not large. If I give one hundred and ten thousand francs to one, what will become of the others? There is reason in all things, even in marrying off a daughter!”

And thus they haggle and haggle, just as though they were trading horses, until finally it is fixed. The happy pair are permitted to see each other; so much is settled upon the young man and so much upon the girl, and they are married, and by the laws of France and the sanction of the holy church, are man and wife. They are man and wife legally but in no other sense.

Of course there can be nothing of love, or affection, or even esteem in such marriages. Monsieur wants Madame to be handsome and accomplished, precisely as he wants a handsome horse—it pleases his eye and gratifies his tastes—but the main point after all is the dot. He has that additional income to live upon. Madame desires Monsieur to be likewise prepossessing, for she wants the world to believe that she married something beside the title of Madame, though all the world knows better.

Each wants the other to be amiable, for even living separate, as they do, they are necessarily under one roof, and bad temper on either side would make things uncomfortable. Above all, they want no jealousy or inquisitiveness. Each wants to be let alone; each desires to follow the bent of his or her inclination, undisturbed and unmolested. And they get up, doubtless, some sort of an esteem for each other, which may in time ripen into something like what outside barbarians call love. But that occurs, probably, after one of them is dead, provided the survivor is too old to marry again. It looks well for a widow of fifty or sixty to revere the memory of her dear departed, and they generally do it, no matter on what terms they lived.

Of course they have children born to them, for there must be heirs to the estate. Madame loves them very much, or appears to, but she sees very little of them. She puts them out to nurse at once. Children are tiresome and wearying to a woman whose day is divided into so much for dressing, so much for riding, so much for eating, and so much for balls or opera. She sees them and admires them, and when they are old enough, marries them off. The father is pleased to see that Henri is growing into a fine boy, or Marie into a fine girl, but he has his business and pleasures to attend to, and besides, there is invariably some woman, somewhere in Paris, that he does love, and she has children also. And so the children grow up, Monsieuring their father and Madaming their mother till they escape from under the paternal and maternal charge, only to go and do the same things for themselves.

Curious notions “our lively neighbors, the Gauls,” as Mr. Micawber says, have of domestic life. There is no such thing in Paris.

This among the upper classes. Jean and Jeannette, the baker and the milliner, are not so particular about the dot, and for a very good reason—neither of them or their parents have a sou to give more than the wedding clothes and a holiday, with an extra bottle of wine on the occasion of the wedding. They dispense with the dot, and, in very many cases, with the legal and religious ceremonies, which are considered necessary among other classes, and among all classes in other countries. Having nothing else to marry for, they marry for love, and very good husbands and wives they make. True, Jean goes to his cafÉ every night, to save the country in his way, and Jeannette expects him to, but as they do not inhabit large houses they are naturally brought closer together, and, consequently, are more in sympathy with each other. Jean, with two francs a day, even with the help of Jeannette, who may earn quite as much, cannot afford the luxury of separate rooms or separate beds. One answers them both, and not infrequently they have not that one.

But with their cheap wine and their very cheap bread, and, above all, their careless, happy-go-lucky dispositions, they manage to get along very comfortably. So long as they can work, and they do work, both of them, they live very well; and when sickness or old age comes there are excellent hospitals to go to, and after that—why, the church has fixed their hereafter, and so everything is smooth with them.

Poverty has its uses, though, desirable as it is, I find I can get on with a very little of it. I firmly believe that in time I could accustom myself to riches, and really enjoy myself. But it may never be.

Madame, the faro bankeress, is at the same hotel with us, and is getting on famously in French. This morning at breakfast—she calls it “dejuner”—much to the waiter’s astonishment, she ordered “cafÉ o’lay—with milk,” and at dinner, “frozen champagne glace,” never knowing, poor woman, that cafÉ au lait means, simply, coffee with milk, and champagne glacÉ is simply chilled champagne. But it did nobody else any harm except the waiter, and it pleased her. She remarked to the other lady that she was sure she would have no trouble in getting along—which she would not, as the waiter, being an Englishman, could understand even her English, except when she plunged too much into French.

“Have you been to the Louvre?” asked the other lady, or the lady, to be accurate.

“Oh, no, not yet. I have no doubt it is altogether too sweet for anything, but I have not had time. I dote on art. But I have found a new place where you can get such lovely laces, for almost nothing, and another where silk hosiery can be had for less than half what you have to pay in New York. And I bought such a lovely dress for Lulu, a pearl silk, with such a lovely waist, and an embroidered front, with roses embroidered in the skirt. It is just like the one she wore at the children’s ball, at Mrs. Thompson’s, last Winter, which cost me more than twice what this one did and wasn’t half so nice. But Lulu looked altogether too sweet for anything in that, though, and everybody at the ball was in perfect rapture over her. And then I bought a sweet suit for little Alfred, my youngest child, nine years old. It is such a perfectly sweet little pair of pants with a waist that buttons on just lovely, and with red stockings and purple shoes he will be altogether too sweet for anything. They will fit, for I have the measure of both the children with me. I have found out that when one travels to see nature and things, one ought always to be prepared. That’s why I brought their measure with me.”

At this point the husband of the other lady, who could not help hearing all this, as he had for many weary days, told me an anecdote like this:—

“A young man with a very bad voice, but who firmly and steadfastly believed that in the article of voice he was the superior of Brignoli, engaged a teacher to give him lessons. When asked how he liked his teacher his reply was that he was a good master, but he was altogether too religious for him.

“How too religious?”

“Why, while I am practicing, he walks up and down the room wringing his hands and praying.”

“What is his prayer? What does he pray about?”

“I can’t exactly say, but I caught the words, ‘Heavenly Father! how long must I endure this?’ There was doubtless something the matter with him.”

There was no necessity for him to point to the moral of this, for the stream of gabble flowed on in a smooth and continuous flow, finding no rocks of thought to give it picturesqueness, or no impediment of fact to make it pause. It was simply the wagging of a tongue that was hung on a swivel in the middle—a tongue which would wag so long as the lungs furnished breath and the muscles that moved it held out. Inasmuch as she has pleasant rooms and likes the hotel, and will not move, we are going to find another. But probably we shall find another just like her at the new place. They are the people who delight in travel and are everywhere.

Tibbitts has made the acquaintance of a wholesale liquor dealer, who is going to “do” Switzerland, and Tibbitts has determined to join him.

“Why join a wholesale liquor dealer?”

“With an eye solely to the future. In the coming years what may happen to me? Will it not be handy to drop into his place, and, after remarking about the weather, say, ‘Thompson, do you remember it was just five years ago to-day that we climbed Mont Blanc? And do you remember when you gave out at the foot of the first glacier how I pulled you up?’ Or, ‘What day of the month is this? 16th? Yes; exactly six years ago to-day we were skimming over the Brunig Pass, on our way to Lucerne.’ Then he can’t do less than to ask me to take something. And then we will sit and sit, talking over our European experiences and drinking his liquor. I shall live very near his place, so as to have it handy. It is a provision for a doubtful future. You are altogether too careless about such things. You haven’t common prudence. A man who in his youth do’n’t lay up provision for his old age is very reckless indeed. I count the association with this delightful man as good as half my living all my life. I shall try to strike a merchant tailor after I have fixed myself in this man’s memory, and after that, if I stay long enough, a boot and shoe man. The past is safe; the present I am satisfied with. What I want now is an assured future. Then I am heeled.”