The Parisians may be kind fathers and devoted mothers: I am sure that they are; but to the observer in the streets and restaurants their finest shades of protective affection would seem to be reserved for dogs. One sees their children with bonnes; their dogs are their own care. The ibis of Egypt is hardly more sacred. An English friend who has lived in the heart of Paris for some time in the company of a fox terrier tells me that on their walks abroad in the evening the number of strangers who stop him to pass friendly remarks upon his pet or ask to be allowed to pat it—or who make overtures to it without permission—is beyond belief. No pink baby in Kensington Gardens is more admired. Dogs in English restaurants are a rarity: but in Paris they are so much a matter of course that a little pâtée is always ready for them.

It was of course a French tongue that first gave utterance to the sentiment, "The more I see of men the more I like dogs"; but I cannot pretend to have observed that the Frenchman suffers any loss in prestige or power from this attention to the tou-tou and the lou-lou. Nothing, I believe, will ever diminish the confidence or success of that lord of creation. He may to the insular eye be too conscious of his charms; he may suggest the boudoir rather than the field of battle or the field of sport; he may amuse by his hat, astonish by his beard, and perplex by his boots; but the fact remains that he is master of Paris, and Paris is the centre of civilisation.

The Parisians not only adore their dogs in life: they give them very honourable burial. We have in London, by Lancaster Gate, a tiny cemetery for these friendly creatures; but that is nothing as compared with the cemetery at St. Ouen, on an island in the Seine. Here are monuments of the most elaborate description, and fresh wreaths everywhere. The most striking tomb is that of a Saint Bernard who saved forty persons but was killed by the forty-first—a hero of whose history one would like to know more, but the gate-keeper is curiously uninstructed.[2]

I walked among these myriad graves, all very recent in date, and was not a little touched by the affection that had gone to their making. I noted a few names: Petit Bob, Espérance (whose portrait is in bas-relief accompanied by that of its master), Peggie, Fan, Pincke, Manon, Dick, Siko, Léonette (aged 17 years and 4 months), Toby, Kiki, Ben-Ben ("toujours gai, fidèle et caressant"—what an epitaph to strive for!), Javotte, Nana, Lili, Dedjaz, Trinquefort, Teddy and Prince (whose mausoleum is superb), Fifi (who saved lives), Colette, Dash (a spaniel, with a little bronze sparrow perching on his tomb), Boy, Bizon (who saved his owner's life and therefore has this souvenir), and Mosque ("regretté et fidèle ami"). There must be hundreds and hundreds altogether, and it will not be long before another "Dog's Acre" is required.

Standing amid all the little graves I felt that the one thing I wanted to see was a dog's funeral. For surely there must be impressive obsequies as a preparation to such thoughtful burial. But I did not. No melancholy cortège came that way that afternoon; Fido's pompes funèbres are still a mystery to me.

But to my mind the best dogs in Paris are not such toy pets as for the most part are here kept in sacred memory, but those eager pointers that one sees on Sunday morning at the Gare du Nord, and indeed at all the big stations, following brisk, plump sportsmen with all the opéra bouffe insignia of the chase—the leggings and the belt and the great satchel and the gun. For the Frenchman who is going to shoot likes the world to know what a lucky devil he is: he has none of our furtive English unwillingness to be known for what we are. I have seen them start, and I have waited about in the station towards dinner time just to see them return, with their bags bulging, and their steps springing with the pride and elation of success, and the faithful pointers trotting behind.

Everything is happy at the Jardins des Plantes and d'Acclimatation to-day: but it was not always so. During a critical period of 1870 and 1871 the cages were in a state of panic over the regular arrival of the butcher—not to bring food but to make it. Mr. Labouchere, the "Besieged Resident," writing on December 5th, 1870, says: "Almost all the animals in the Jardin d'Acclimatation have been eaten. They have averaged about 7 f. a lb. Kangaroo has been sold for 12 f. the lb. Yesterday I dined with the correspondent of a London paper. He had managed to get a large piece of mufflon, and nothing else, an animal which is, I believe, only found in Corsica. I can only describe it by saying that it tasted of mufflon, and nothing else. Without being absolutely bad, I do not think that I shall take up my residence in Corsica, in order habitually to feed upon it."

On December 18th Mr. Labouchere was at Voisin's. The bill of fare, he says, was ass, horse and English wolf from the Zoological Gardens. According to a Scotch friend, the English wolf was Scotch fox. Mr. Labouchere could not manage it and fell back on the patient ass. Voisin's, by the way, was the only restaurant which never failed to supply its patrons with a meal. If you ask Paul, the head waiter, he will give you one of the siege menus as a souvenir.

Mr. Labouchere's description of typical life during the siege may be quoted here as offering material for reflection as we loiter about this city so notable to-day for pleasure and plenty. "Here is my day. In the morning the boots comes to call me. He announces the number of deaths which have taken place in the hotel during the night. If there are many he is pleased, as he considers it creditable to the establishment. He then relieves his feelings by shaking his fist in the direction of Versailles, and exits growling 'Canaille de Bismarck'. I get up. I have breakfast—horse, café au lait—the lait chalk and water—the portion of horse about two square inches of the noble quadruped. Then I buy a dozen newspapers, and after having read them discover that they contain nothing new. This brings me to about eleven o'clock. Friends drop in, or I drop in on friends. We discuss how long it is to last—if friends are French we agree that we are sublime. At one o'clock get into the circular railroad, and go to one or other of the city gates. After a discussion with the National Guards on duty, pass through. Potter about for a couple of hours at the outposts; try with glass to make out Prussians; look at bombs bursting; creep along the trenches; and wade knee-deep in mud through the fields. The Prussians, who have grown of late malevolent even towards civilians, occasionally send a ball far over one's head. They always fire too high. French soldiers are generally cooking food. They are anxious for news, and know nothing about what is going on. As a rule they relate the episode of some combat d'avant-poste which took place the day before. The episodes never vary. 5 p.m.—Get back home; talk to doctors about interesting surgical operations; then drop in upon some official to interview him about what he is doing. Official usually first mysterious, then communicative, not to say loquacious, and abuses most people except himself. 7 p.m.—Dinner at a restaurant; conversation general; almost every one in uniform. Still the old subjects—How long will it last? Why does not Gambetta write more clearly? How sublime we are; what a fool every one else is. Food scanty, but peculiar.... After dinner, potter on the Boulevards under the dispiriting gloom of petroleum; go home and read a book. 12 p.m.—Bed. They nail up the coffins in the room just over mine every night, and the tap, tap, tap, as they drive in the nails, is the pleasing music which lulls me to sleep."

Here is another extract illustrating the pass to which a hungry city had come: "Until the weather set in so bitter cold, elderly sportsmen, who did not care to stalk the human game outside, were to be seen from morning to night pursuing the exciting sport of gudgeon fishing along the banks of the Seine. Each one was always surrounded by a crowd deeply interested in the chase. Whenever a fish was hooked, there was as much excitement as when a whale is harpooned in more northern latitudes. The fisherman would play it for some five minutes, and then, in the midst of the solemn silence of the lookers-on, the precious capture would be landed. Once safe on the bank, the happy possessor would be patted on the back, and there would be cries of 'Bravo!' The times being out of joint for fishing in the Seine, the disciples of Izaak Walton have fallen back on the sewers. The Paris Journal gives them the following directions how to pursue their new game: 'Take a long strong line, and a large hook, bait with tallow, and gently agitate the rod. In a few minutes a rat will come and smell the savoury morsel. It will be some time before he decides to swallow it, for his nature is cunning. When he does, leave him five minutes to meditate over it; then pull strongly and steadily. He will make convulsive jumps; but be calm, and do not let his excitement gain on you, draw him up, et voilà votre dîner.'"

There is still hardly less excitement when a fish is landed by a quai fisherman, but the emotion is now purely artistic.

CHAPTER XIV
THE GRANDS BOULEVARDS: I. THE MADELEINE TO THE OPERA

From Temple to Church—Napoleon the Christian—The Chapelle Expiatoire—More Irony of History—Mi-Carême—The Art of Insolence—Spacious Streets—The Champions of France—Marius—Letter-boxes and Stamps—The Facteur at the Bed—Killing a Guide no Murder—The Largest Theatre in the World—A Theatrical Museum.

The Madeleine has had a curious history. The great Napoleon built it, on the site of a small eighteenth-century church, as a Temple of Glory, a gift to his soldiers, where every year on the anniversaries of Austerlitz and Jena a concert was to be held, odes read, and orations delivered on the duties and privileges of the warrior, any mention of the Emperor's own name being expressly forbidden. That was in 1806. The building was still in progress when 1815 came, with another and more momentous battle in it, and Napoleon and his proposal disappeared. The building of the Temple of Glory was continued as a church, and a church it still is; and the memory of Jena and Austerlitz is kept alive in Paris by other means (they have, for example, each a bridge), no official orations are delivered on the soldier's calling, no official odes recited. It was a noble idea of the Emperor's, and however perfunctorily carried out, could not have left one with a less satisfied feeling than some of the present ceremonials in the Madeleine, which has become the most fashionable Paris church. Napoleon, however, is not wholly forgotten, for in the apse, I understand, is a fresco representing Christ reviewing the chief champions of Christianity and felicitating with them upon their services, the great Emperor being by no means absent. Herr Baedeker says that the fresco is there, but I have not succeeded in seeing it, for the church is lit only by three small cupolas and is dark with religious dusk.

Within, the Madeleine is a surprise, for it does not conform to its fine outward design. One expects a classic severity and simplicity, and instead it is paint and Italianate curves. The wisest course for the visitor is to avoid the steps and the importunate mendicants at the railings, and slip in by the little portal on the west side where the discreet closed carriages wait.

Louis XVIII., with his passion—a very natural one—to obliterate Napoleon and the revolutionaries and resume monarchical continuity, wished to complete the Madeleine as a monument to Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette; but he did not persevere with the idea. He built instead, on the site of the old cemetery of the Madeleine, where Louis XVI. and the Queen had been buried, the Chapelle Expiatoire. It is their memory only which is preserved here, for, after Waterloo, their bones were carried to St. Denis, where the other French kings lie. Their statues, however, are enshrined in the building (which is just off the Boulevard Haussmann, isolated solemnly and impressively among chestnut trees and playing children), the king being solaced by an angel who remarks to him in the words used by Father Edgeworth on the scaffold, "Fils de St. Louis, montez au ciel!" and the queen by religion, personified by her sister-in-law, Madame Elizabeth. The door-keeper, who conducted me as guide, was in raptures over Louis XVI.'s lace and the circumstance that he was hewn from a single block of marble. I liked his enthusiasm: these unfortunate monarchs deserve the utmost that sculptor and door-keeper can give them.

Paris has changed its mind more completely and frequently than any city in the world—and no illustration of that foible is better than this before us. Consider the sequence: first the king; then the prisoner; then the execution—the body and head being carried to the nearest cemetery, the Madeleine, where the guillotine's victims were naturally flung, and carelessly buried. Ten months later the queen's body and head follow. (It is said that the records of the Madeleine contain an entry by a sexton, which runs in English, "Paid seven francs for a coffin for the Widow Capet".) That was in 1793. Not until 1815 do they find sepulture befitting them, and then this chapel rises in their honour and they become saints.

Among other bodies buried here was that of Charlotte Corday. Also the Swiss Guards, whom we saw meeting death at the Tuileries. A strange place, and to-day, in a Paris that cares nothing for Capets, a perfect example of what might paradoxically be called well-kept neglect.

To me the Madeleine has always a spurious air: nothing in it seems quite true. Externally, its Roman proportions carry no hint of the Christian religion; within, there is a noticeable lack of reverence. Every one walks about, and the Suisses are of the world peculiarly and offensively worldly. Standing before the altar with its representation of the Magdalen, who gives the church its name, being carried to Heaven, it is difficult to realise that only thirty-eight years ago this very spot was running red with the blood of massacred Communards.

I remember the Madeleine most naturally as I saw it once at Mi-Carême, from an upper window at Durand's, after lunch. It was a dull day and the Madeleine frowned on the human sea beneath it; for the Place before it and the Rue Royale were black with people. The portico is always impressive, but I had never before had so much time or such excellent opportunity to study it and its relief of the Last Judgment, an improbable contingency to which few of us were giving much thought just then. Not only were the steps crowded, but two men had climbed to the green roof and were sitting on the very apex of the building.

The Mi-Carême carnival in Paris, I may say at once, is not worth crossing the Channel for. It is tawdry and stupid; the life of the city is dislocated; the Grands Boulevards are quickly some inches deep in confetti, all of which has been discharged into faces and even eyes before reaching the ground; the air is full of dust; and the places of amusement are uncomfortably crowded. The Lutetian humours of the Latin Quarter students and of Montmartre are not without interest for a short time, but they become tedious with extraordinary swiftness and certainty as the morning grows grey.

Each side of the Madeleine has its flower markets, and they share the week between them. Round and about Christmas a forest of fir-trees springs up. At the back of the Madeleine omnibuses and trams converge as at the Elephant.

For a walk along the Grands Boulevards this temple is the best starting-point; but I do not suggest that the whole round shall be made. By the Grands Boulevards the precisian would mean the half circle from the Madeleine to the Place de la République and thence to the Place de la Bastille; or even the whole circle, crossing the river by the Pont Sully to the Boulevard St. Antoine, which cuts right through the Surrey side and crosses the river by the Pont de la Concorde and so comes to the Rue Royale and the Madeleine again. Those are the Grands Boulevards; but when the term is conversationally used it means nothing whatever but the stretch of broad road and pavement, of vivid kiosques and green branches, between the Madeleine and the Rue Richelieu: that is the Grands Boulevards for the flâneur and the foreigner. All the best cafés to sit at, all the prettiest women to stare at, all the most entertaining shop windows, are found between these points.

The prettiest women to stare at! Here I touch on a weakness in the life of Paris which there is no doubt the Boulevards have fostered. Staring—more than staring, a cool cynical appraisement—is one of the privileges which the Boulevardier most prizes. I have heard it said that he carries staring to a fine art; but it is not an art at all, and certainly not fine; it is just a coarse and disgusting liberty. It is nothing to him that the object of his interest is accompanied by a man; his code ignores that detail; he is out to see and to make an impression and nothing will stop him. One must not, however, let this ugly practice offend one's sensibility too much. Foreigners need not necessarily do as the Romans do, but it is not their right to be too critical of Rome; and liberty is the very air of the Boulevards. Live and let live. If one is going to be annoyed by Paris, one had better stay at home.

The Grands Boulevards might be called the show-rooms of Paris: it is here that one sees the Parisians. In London one may live for years and never see a Londoner; not because Londoners do not exist, but because London has no show-rooms for their display. There is no Boulevard in London; the only streets that have a pavement capable of accommodating both spectators and a real procession of types are deserted, such as Portland Place and Kingsway. The English, who conquer and administer the world, dislike space; the French, a people at whose alleged want of inches we used to mock, rejoice in space. Think of the Champs-Elysées and the Bois, and then think of Constitution Hill and Hyde Park, and you realise the difference. Take a mental drive by any of the principal Boulevards—from the Madeleine eastward to the Place de la République and back to the Madeleine again by way of the Boulevards de Magenta and Clichy and down the Boulevard Malesherbes, and then take a mental drive from Hyde Park Corner by way of Piccadilly, the Strand, Fleet Street, Cannon Street, Lombard Street, Cheapside, Holborn, Oxford Street and Park Lane to Hyde Park Corner again and you realise the difference. In wet weather in Paris it is possible to walk all day and not be splashed. Think of our most fashionable thoroughfare, just by Long's Hotel, when it is raining—our Rue de la Paix. The only street in London of which a Frenchman would not be ashamed is the Mile End Road.

At the Taverne Olympia—just past the old houses standing back from the pavement, on the left, which are built on the wall of the old moat, when this Boulevard really was a bulwark or fortification—at the Taverne Olympia, upstairs, is one of the few billiard saloons in Paris in which exhibition games are continually in progress, and in which one can fill many amusing half-hours and perhaps win a few louis. Years ago I used to frequent the saloon in a basement under the Grand Café, a few doors east of the Olympia, but it has lost some of its prestige. The best play now is at Olympia and at Cure's place in the Rue Vivienne. Every day of the year, for ever and ever, a billiard match is in progress. So you may say is, in the winter, the case in London at Burroughs and Watts', or Thurston's, but these are very different. In London the match is for a large number of points and it may last a week or a fortnight. Here there are scores of matches every afternoon and evening and the price of admission is a consommation. By virtue of one glass of coffee you may sit for hours and watch champion of France after champion of France lose and win, win and lose.

The usual game is played by three champions of France and is for ten cannons off the red. The names of the players, on cards, are first flung on the table, and the amateur of sport advances from his seat and stakes five francs on that champion of France whom he favours. Five francs is the unit. On my first visit, years ago, the champion whom I, very unsoundly but not perhaps unnaturally, supported, was one Lucas. Poor fellow, on that afternoon he did his best, but he never got home. The great Marius was too much for him. Marius in those days was a very fine player and the hero of the saloon at the Grand Café. A Southerner I should guess; for I have seen his doubles by the score in the cafés of Avignon and Nîmes. He was short and thick, with a bald head and a large sagacious nose and a saturnine smile and a heavy moustache. Winning and losing were all one to him, although it is understood that fifty centimes are contributed by each of his backers to a champion of France when he brings it off. Marius looked down his nose in the same way whatever happened. He was no Roberts; he had none of the Cæsarian masterfulness, none of the Napoleonic decision, of that king of men. The modern French game does not lend itself to such commanding excellence, such Alpine distinction. The cannon is all: there is no longer any of the quiet and magical disappearance of the ball into a pocket which makes the English game so fascinating.

Such was Marius when I first saw him, and quite lately I descended to his cellar again and found him unaltered, except that he was no longer a master except very occasionally, and that he had grown more sardonic. I do not wonder at it. It may not be, in Paris, "a lonely thing to be champion," as Cashel Byron says, but it must be a melancholy thing to be no longer the champion that you were. A home of rest for ex-champions would draw my guinea at once.

The ten or eight cannons off the red, I might add, are varied now and then. Sometimes there is a match between two players for a hundred points. Sometimes three players will see which can first make eight cannons, each involving three cushions (trois bandes). This is a very interesting game to watch, although it may be a concession to decadence.

We come next to the Rue Scribe, and crossing it, are at "Old England," a shop where the homesick may buy such a peculiarly English delicacy as marmalade, beneath the shadow of the gigantic Grand Hotel, notable not only for its million bedrooms but for marking the position of one of the few post offices of Paris, and also the only shop in the centre of the city which keeps a large and civilised stock of Havana cigars. One can live without Havana cigars, but post offices are a necessity, and in Paris they conceal themselves with great success; while, as for letter-boxes, it has been described as a city without one. To a Londoner accustomed to the frequent and vivid occurrence at street corners of our scarlet obelisks, it is so. Quite recently I heard of a young Englishman, shy and incorrigibly one-languaged, who, during a week in Paris, entrusted all his correspondence to a fire-alarm. But, as a matter of fact, Paris has letter-boxes in great number, only for the most part they are so concealed as to be solely for the initiated. Directly one learns that every tobacconist also sells stamps and either secretes a letter-box somewhere beneath his window, or marks the propinquity of one, life becomes simple.

Although normally one never has, in France, even in the official receptacle of one of the chief of the Bureaux des Postes, any of that confidence that one reposes in the smallest wall-box in England; yet one must perforce overcome this distrust or use only pneumatiques. The French do not carry ordinary letters very well, but if you register them nothing can keep the postman from you. A knock like thunder crashes into your dreams, and behold he is at your bedside, alert and important, be-ribboned with red tape, tendering for your signature a pen dipped in an inkstand concealed about his person. Every one who goes to France for amusement should arrange to receive one registered letter.

Its letter-boxes may be a trifle farcical, but in its facilities given to purchasers of stamps France makes England look an uncivilised country. Why it should be illegal for any one but a postal official to supply stamps in my own land, I have never been informed, nor have any of the objections to the system ever been explained away. In France you may get your stamps anywhere—from tobacconists for certain; from waiters for certain; from the newspaper kiosques for certain; and from all tradespeople almost for certain: hence one is relieved of the tiresome delays in post offices that are incident to English life. But I am inclined to think that when it comes to the post office proper, England has the advantage. The French post office (when you have found it) is always crowded and always overheated; and you remember what I told the men in the Mint.

To return to the Grand Hotel, I am minded to express the wish that something could be done to rid its pavement of the sly leering detrimental with an umbrella who comes up to the foreigner and offers his services as a guide to the night side of Paris. Not until an Englishman has killed one of these pests will this part of Paris be endurable. But from what I have observed I should say that few murders are less likely to occur....

And so we come to the Café de la Paix, and turning to the left, the Opera is before us. The Opera is one of the buildings of Paris that are taken for granted. We do not look at it much: we think of it as occupying the central position, adjacent to Cook's, useful as a place of meeting; we buy a seat there occasionally, and that is all. And yet it is the largest theatre in the world (the work of that Charles Garnier whose statue is just outside), and although it is not exactly beautiful, its proportions are agreeable; it does not obtrude its size (and yet it covers three acres); it sits very comfortably on the ground, and an incredible amount of patient labour and thought went to its achievement, as any one may see by walking round it and studying the ornamentation and the statuary, among which is Carpeaux's famous lively group "La Danse". One very pleasant characteristic of the Opera is the modesty with which it announces its performances: nothing but a minute poster in a frame, three or four times repeated, giving the information to the passer-by. Larger posters would impair its superb reserve.

The Opera has a little museum, the entrance to which is in the Rue Auber corner, by the statue of the architect (with his plan of the building traced in bronze below his bust). This museum is a model of its kind—small but very pertinent and personal in character. Here are one of Paganini's bows and his rosin box; souvenirs of Malibran presented to her by some Venetian admirers in 1835; Berlioz' season ticket for the Opera in 1838, and a page of one of his scores; Rossini in a marble statuette, asleep on his sofa, wearing that variety of whisker which we call a Newgate fringe; Rossini on his death-bed, drawn by L. Roux, and a page of a score and a cup and saucer used by him; a match box of Gounod's, a page of a score, and his marble bust; Meyerbeer on his death-bed, drawn by Mousseaux, a decoration worn by that composer, and a page of his score; two of Cherubini's tobacco boxes and a page of his score; Danton's clay caricature of Liszt—all hair and legs—at the piano, and a caricature of Liszt playing the piano while Lablache sings and Habeneck conducts; a bust of Fanny Cerrito, danseuse, in 1821—with a mischievous pretty face—that Cerrito of whom Thomas Ingoldsby rhymed; and a bust of Emma Livry, a danseuse of a later day, who died aged twenty-three from injuries received from fire during the répétition génerale of the "Muette de Portici" on November 15th, 1862. In a little coffer near by are the remains of the clothes the poor creature was wearing at the time. What else is there? Many busts, among them Delibes the composer of "Coppélia," whose grave we shall see in the Cimetière de Montmartre: here bearded and immortal; autograph scores by Verdi, Donizetti, Victor Massé, Auber, Spontini (whose very early piano also is here), and Hérold; a caricature by Isabey of young Vestris bounding in mid-air, models of scenes of famous operas, and a host of other things all displayed easily in a small but sufficient room. If all museums were as compact and single-minded!

CHAPTER XV
A CHAIR AT THE CAFÉ DE LA PAIX

The Green Hour—In the Stalls of Life—National Contrasts and the Futility of Drawing Them—The Concierge—The Bénéfice Hunters—The Claque—The Paris Theatre—The Paris Music Hall—The Everlasting Joke—The Real French—A Country of Energy—A City of Waiters—Ridicule—Women—Cabmen—The Levelling of the Tourist—French Intelligence—The Chauffeurs—The Paris Spectacle.

And now since it is the "green hour"—since it is five o'clock—let us take a chair outside the Café de la Paix and watch the people pass, and meditate, here, in the centre of the civilised world, on this wonderful city of Paris and this wonderful country of France.

I am not sure but that when all is said it is not these outdoor café chairs of Paris that give it its highest charm and divide it from London with the greatest emphasis. There are three reasons why one cannot sit out in this way in London: the city is too dirty; the air is rarely warm enough; and the pavements are too narrow. But in Paris, which enjoys the steadier climate of a continent and understands the æsthetic uses of a pavement, and burns wood, charcoal or anthracite, it is, when dry, always possible; and I, for one, rejoice in the privilege. This "green hour"—this quiet recess between five and six in which to sip an apéritif, and talk, and watch the world, and anticipate a good dinner—is as characteristically French as the absence of it is characteristically English. The English can sip their beverages too, but how different is the bar at which they stand from the comfortable stalls (so to speak) in the open-air theatres of the Boulevards in which the French take their ease.

At every turn one is reminded that these people live as if the happiness of this life were the only important thing; while if we subtract a frivolous fringe, it may be said of the English that (without any noticeable gain in such advantages as spirituality confers) they are always preparing to be happy but have not yet enough money or are not yet quite ready to begin. The Frenchman is happy now: the Englishman will be happy to-morrow. (That is, at home; yet I have seen Englishmen in Paris gathering honey while they might, with both hands.)

But the French and English, London and Paris, are not really to be compared. London and Paris indeed are different in almost every respect, as the capitals of two totally and almost inimically different nations must be. For a few days the Englishman is apt to think that Paris has all the advantages: but that is because he is on a holiday; he soon comes to realise that London is his home, London knows his needs and supplies them. Much as I delight in Paris I would make almost any sacrifice rather than be forced to live there; yet so long as inclination is one's only master how pleasant are her vivacity and charm. But comparisons between nations are idle. For a Frenchman there is no country like France and no city like Paris; for an Englishman England is the best country and London the most desirable city. For a short holiday for an Englishman, Paris is a little paradise; for a short holiday for a Frenchman, London is a little inferno.

The French may have abolished bookmakers from their race-courses and may give even a cabman a clean napkin to his meals, but their tobacco is a monopoly. The English may fill their streets with newspaper posters advertising horrors and scandals, but they are permitted now and then to forget their vile bodies. The French may piously and prettily erect statues of every illustrious child of the State, but their billiard tables are now without pockets. London may have a cleaner Tube railway system than Paris, but Paris has the advantage of no lifts and a correspondence ticket at a trifling cost which will take you everywhere, whereas London's Tubes belonging to different companies the correspondence is expensive. Again with omnibuses, London may have more and better, but here again the useful correspondence system is to be found only in Paris.

London may be in darkness for most of the winter and be rained upon by soot all the year round; but at any rate the Londoner is master in his own house or flat and not the cringing victim of a concierge, as every Parisian is. That is something to remember and be thankful for. Paris has an atmosphere, and a climate, and good food, and attentive waiters, and a cab to every six yards of the kerb, and no petty licensing tyrannies, and the Champs-Elysées, and immunity from lurid newspaper posters, and good coffee, and the Winged Victory, and Monna Lisa; but it also has the concierge. At the entrance to every house is this inquisitive censorious janitor—a blend in human shape of Cerberus and the Recording Angel. The concierge knows the time you go out and (more serious) the time you come in; what letters and parcels you receive; what visitors, and how long they stay. The concierge knows how much rent you pay and what you eat and drink. And the worst of it is that since the concierge keeps the door and dominates the house you must put a good face on it or you will lose very heavily. Scowl at the concierge and your life will become a harassment: letters will be lost; parcels will be delayed; visitors will be told you are at home; a thousand little vexations will occur. The concierge in short is a rod which, you will observe, it is well to kiss. The wise Parisian therefore is always amiable, and generous too, although in his heart he wishes the whole system at the devil.

And here I ought to say that although one is thus conscious of certain of the defects and virtues of each nation, I have no belief whatever in any large interchange of characteristics being possible. Nations I think can borrow very little from each other. What is sauce for the goose is by no means necessarily sauce for the oie, and the meat of an homme can easily be the poison of a man.

The French and the English base life on such different premises. To put the case in a nutshell, we may say that the French welcome facts and the English avoid them. The French make the most of facts; the English persuade themselves that facts are not there. The French write books and plays about facts, and read and go to the theatre to see facts; the English write books and plays about sentimental unreality, and read and go to the theatre in order to be diverted from facts. The French live quietly and resignedly at home among facts; the English exhaust themselves in games and travel and frivolity and social inquisitiveness, in order to forget that they have facts in their midst.

One always used to think that the English were the most willing endurers of impositions and monopolies; but I have come to the conclusion that a people that can continue to burn French matches and use French ink and blotting-paper, bend before the concierge and suffer the claque and the French theatre attendant, must be even weaker. Only a people in love with slavery would continue to endure the black bombazined harpies who turn the French theatres into infernos, first by their very presence and secondly by their clamour for a bénéfice. They do nothing and they levy a tax on it. So far from exterminating them, this absurd lenient French people has even allowed them to dominate the cinematoscope halls which are now so numerous all over Paris. I sit and watch them and wonder what they do all day: in what dark corner of the city they hang like bats till the evening arrives and they are free to poison the air of the theatres and exact their iniquitous secret commission. The habit of London managers to charge sixpence for a programme—an advertisement of his wares such as every decent and courteous tradesman is proud to give away—is sufficiently monstrous; but I can never enough honour them for excluding these bénéfice hunters.

Whatever may be said of French acting and French plays there is no doubt that our theatres are more comfortable and better managed. A Frenchman visiting a theatre in London has no difficulties: he buys his seat at the office, is shown to it and the matter ends. An Englishman visiting a theatre in Paris has no such ease. He must first buy his ticket (and let him scrutinise the change with some care and despatch); this ticket, however, does not, as in London, carry the number of his seat: it is merely a card of introduction to the three gentlemen in evening dress and tall hats who sit side by side in a kind of pulpit in the lobby. One of them takes his ticket, another consults a plan and writes a number on it, and the third hands it back. Another difficulty has yet to come, for now begins the turn of the harpies. Why the English custom is not followed, and a clean sweep made of both the men in the pulpit and the women inside, one has no notion; for in addition to being a nuisance they must reduce the profits.

I mentioned the claque just now. That is another of the Frenchman's darling bugbears which the English would never stand. Every Frenchman to whom I have spoken about it shares my view that it is an abomination, but when I ask why it is not abolished he merely shrugs his shoulders: "Why should it be?—one can endure it," is the attitude; and that indeed is the Frenchman's attitude to most of the things that he finds objectionable. They are, after all, only trimmings; the real fabric of his life is not injured by them; therefore let them go on. Yet while one can understand the persistence of certain Parisian defects, the long life of the claque remains a mystery. Upon me the periodical and mechanical explosions of this body of hirelings have an effect little short of infuriation. One is told that the actors are responsible rather than the managers, and this makes its continuance the more unreasonable, for the result has been that in their efforts to acquire the illusion of applause, they have lost the real thing. French audiences rarely clap any more.

When it comes to the consideration of the French stage, there is again no point in making comparisons. It is again a conflict of fact and sentiment. The French are intensely interested in the manifestations of the sexual emotion, and they have no objection to see the calamities and embarrassments and humours to which it may lead worked out frankly on the boards or in literature: hence a certain sameness in their plays and novels. The majority of the English still think that physical matters should be hidden: hence our dramatists and novelists having had to find other themes, adventure, eccentricity and character have won their predominant place. That is all there is to it. The French stage is the best—to a Frenchman or a gallicised Englishman; the English stage is the best—to the English. The English go rather to see; the French to hear. In other words a blind Frenchman would be better pleased with his national stage than a blind Englishman with his. The blind Frenchman would at any rate not miss the jokes, which, though he knew them all before, he could not resist; whereas the Englishman would be deprived of the visible touches of which the personæ of our drama are largely built up. In a drama of passion, whether treated seriously or lightly, words necessarily are more than idiosyncrasies.

In the Paris music halls the comic singers merely sing—they have little but words to give. London music hall audiences may have an undue affection for red noses and sordid domestic details; but they do expect a little character, even if it is coarse character, during the evening, and they get it. There is little in the French hall. Personality is discouraged here; richness, quaintness, unction, irresponsibility, eccentricity—such gifts as once pleased us in Dan Leno and now are to be found in a lesser degree but very agreeably in Wilkie Bard—these are superfluities to a French comic singer. All that is asked of him is that he shall be active, shall have a resonant voice, and shall commit to memory a sufficient number of cynical reflections on life. A gramophone producing any rapid indecent song would please the French more than a hundred Harry Lauders. (And yet when all is said it must be far easier to live in a country where decency, as we understand and painfully cultivate it, has not everywhere to be considered. The life at any rate of the French author, publisher, editor and magistrate, to name no others, is immensely simplified.)

But from my point of view the worst characteristic of the French music hall and variety stage is the revue. The revue is indeed a standing proof of the incontrovertible fact that however the hotel proprietors may feel about it, the Parisian does not want English people in his midst. (Why should he?) The revue in its quiddity is a device for excluding foreigners from theatres; for it is not only dull and monotonous, but being for the most part a satire on Parisian politics is incomprehensible too. I am not here to defend the English pantomime, but not all its agonies (as Ruskin called them) reach such a height of tedium as a revue can achieve. A Frenchman ignorant of English at Drury Lane on Boxing Night might be bewildered and even stunned; but he would at any rate know something of what was happening and his eyes would be kept busy. An Englishman at a revue knows nothing, for there is no story, and very little money is spent on the stage picture: it is just a steady cataract of topical talk. I have endured many revues, always hoping against hope that some one would be witty or funny, that some ingenious satirical device would occur. But I have never been rewarded. No matter what the nominal subject, the jokes have been the same: the old old mots à double entente, the old old outspoken indecency....

The stream of people continues to be incessant and of incredible density—all walking at the same pace, all talking as only the French can talk, rich and poor equally owners of the pavement. Now and then a camelot offers a toy or a picture postcard; boys bring La Patrie or La Presse; a performer bends and twists a piece of felt into every shape of hat, culminating in Napoleon's famous chapeau à cornes....

One thing that one notices is the absence of laughter. The French laugh aloud very seldom. Even in their theatres, at the richest French jokes, their approval is expressed rather in a rippling murmur counterfeiting surprise than a laugh. Animation one sees, but on these Boulevards behind that is often a suggestion of anxiety. The dominant type of face seen from a chair at the Café de la Paix is not a happy one....

It is when one watches this restless moving crowd, or the complacent audiences at the farces, or the diners in restaurants eating as if it were the last meal, and when one looks week after week at the comic papers of Paris, with their deadly insistence on the one and apparently only concern of Parisian life, that one has most of all to remind oneself that these people are not the French, and that one is a superficial tourist in danger of acquiring very wrong impressions. This is the fringe, the froth. One has only to remember a very few of the things we have seen in Paris to realise the truth of this. Never was a harder working people. Look at the early hours that Paris keeps: contrast them with London's slovenly awakening. Look at the amazing productivity of a notoriously idle and careless set—the artists: the old Salon with its miles of pictures twice a year, and the other Salons, hardly less crowded, and the minor exhibitions too. Look at the industry of the Paris stage: the new plays that are produced every week, involving endless rehearsals day and night. Look at the energy of the French authors, dramatic as well as narrative, of the journalists and printers. Think of the engineers, the motor-car manufacturers, the gardeners and the vintners. Think of the bottle-makers. (But one cannot: such a thought causes the head to reel in this city of bottles.) No, we are not seeing France, we foreign visitors to "the gay capital". Don't let us labour under any such mistake. The industrious, level-headed, cheerful French people do not exhibit themselves to the scrutinising eyes of the Café de la Paix, do not spend all their time as Le Rire would have us believe, do not over eat and over drink.

Around and about one all the time, as one watches this panorama, the swift and capable waiters are busy. Every one carries away from Paris one mastering impression upon the inward eye: I am not sure that mine is not a blur of waiters in their long white aprons. At the Paris Exhibition of 1900, over the principal entrance at the south-west corner of the Place de la Concorde, was the gigantic figure of a young and fashionable woman in the very heyday of her vivacity, allurement and smartness. She personified Paris. But not so would I symbolise that city. In any coat of arms of Paris that I designed would certainly be a capable young woman, but also a waiter, sleek, attentive and sympathetic.

Paris may be a city of feminine charm and domination; but to the ordinary foreigner, and especially the Englishman, it is far more a city of waiters. Women we have in England too: but waiters we have not. There are waiters in London, no doubt, but that is the end of them: there are, to all intents and purposes, no waiters in the provinces, where we eat exclusively in our own houses. And even in London we must brace ourselves to find such waiters as there are: we must indulge in heroic feats of patience, and, once the waiter comes into view, exercise most of the vocal organs to attract his notice and obtain his suffrages. In other words, there is in London perhaps one waiter to every five thousand persons; whereas in Paris there are five thousand waiters, more or less, to every one person. Or so it seems. It is a city of waiters; it is the city of waiters.

Still the people stream by, and one wonders whence the idea comes that the French are a particularly small race. It is not true. Look at that tall boulevardier with some one else's hat (why do so many Frenchmen seem to be wearing other men's hats?) and the immense beard. Look at those two long-haired artists from the Latin Quarter, in velvet clothes and black sombreros. In England they would be stared at and laughed at; but here no one is laughed at at all, and only the women are stared at. It is interesting to note how little street ridicule there is in France. The Frenchman mocks, but he does not, as I think so many of the English do, search for the ridiculous; or at any rate it is not the same kind of ridiculousness that we pillory. In England we bring such sandpaper of prejudice and public opinion to bear upon eccentricity that every one becomes smooth and ordinary—like every one else. But in France—to the superficial observer, at any rate—individuality is encouraged and nourished; in France either no one is ridiculous or every one is.

Some one once remarked to me that never in Paris do you see a woman with any touch of the woods. It is true. The Parisian women suggest the boudoir, the theatre, the salon, the sewing-room, the kitchen, and now and then even the fields; but never the woods....

One misses also in Paris the boy of from fifteen to eighteen. Younger boys there are, and young men abound, but youths of that age one does not much see, and very rarely indeed a father and son together. In fact the generations seem to mix very little: in the restaurants men of the same age are usually together: beards lunch with beards....

And the road is dense too. There is a block every few minutes, while the agents in the centre of the carrefour do their best to control the four streams of traffic. It is odd that a people with so much sense of order and red tape should fail so signally to produce an organiser of traffic. Certain it is that the stupidest Kentish giant who joins the Metropolitan police force has a better idea of such a duty than any of these polished gentlemen in caps. Partly perhaps because in London the police are feared and obeyed, and in Paris the drivers, particularly the cabmen, care for no one. The words Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité are not stencilled all over our churches and public buildings, you see.

The cabmen! My impression now is, writing here in England, that the Paris cochers are all exactly alike. They have white hats and blue coats and bad horses and black moustaches, and their backs entirely fill the landscape. They beat their horses and shout at them all the time. One seldom sees an accident, although they never look as if they were going to avoid one. That is partly because they are a weary and cynical folk, and partly because in France the roads belong to vehicles, and not, as in England, to foot-passengers. In England if you are run over, you can prosecute the driver and get damages; in France if you are run over, the driver (one has always heard) can prosecute you for being in the way.