is worse) despises it. Nor do I, to say truth, see that kindness to an acquaintance is at all destructive to sincerity to a friend; on the contrary, I have yet to learn that you are (according to the customs of your country) worse friends, worse husbands, or worse fathers than we are!" "What!" cried I, "you forget yourself, Vincent. How can the private virtues be cultivated without a coal fire? Is not domestic affection a synonymous term with domestic hearth? and where do you find either, except in honest old England?" "True," replied Vincent; " and it is certainly impossible for a father and his family to be as fond of each other on a bright day in the Tuileries, or at Versailles, with music and dancing, and fresh air, as they would be in a back parlor, by a smoky hearth, occupied entirely by le bon père, et la bonne mère; while the poor little children sit at the other end of the table whispering and shivering, debarred the vent of all natural spirits, for fear of making a noise; and strangely uniting the idea of the domestic hearth with that of a hobgoblin, and the association of dear papa with that of a birch rod." We all laughed at this reply, and Monsieur d'A rising to depart, said, "Well, well, Milord, your countrymen are great generalizers in philosophy; they reduce human actions to two grand touchstones. All hilarity, they consider the sign of a shallow mind; and all kindness, the token of a false heart." CHAPTER XVI. Quis sapiens bono Confidat fragili? 1-SENECA. Grammatici certant, et adhuc sub judice lis est.2— HOR. WHEN I first went to Paris, I took a French master to perfect me in the Parisian pronunciation. This "haberdasher of pronouns" was a person of the name of Margot. He was a tall, solemn man, with a face of the most im perturbable gravity. He would have been inestimable as an undertaker. His hair was of a pale yellow; you would have thought it had caught a bilious complaint from his complexion. The latter was, indeed, of so sombre a saffron, that it looked as if ten livers had been forced into a jaundice in order to supply its color. His forehead was high, bald, and very narrow. His cheekbones were extremely prominent, and his cheeks so thin, that they seemed happier than Pyramus and Thisbe, and kissed each other inside without any separation or division. His face was as sharp and almost as long as an inverted pyramid, and was garnished on either side by a miserable, half-starved whisker, which seemed scarcely able to maintain itself amidst the general symptoms of atrophy and decay. This charming countenance was supported by a figure so long, so straight, so shadowy, that you might have taken it for the Monument in a consumption! 1 What wise man confides in the fragile? 2 Grammarians dispute, and the matter is still under consideration of the judge. But the chief characteristic of the man was the utter and wonderful gravity I have before spoken of. You could no more have coaxed a smile out of his countenance, than you could out of the poker; and yet Monsieur Margot was by no means a melancholy man. He loved his joke, and his wine, and his dinner, just as much as if he had been of a fatter frame; and it was a fine specimen of the practical antithesis, to hear a good story, or a jovial expression, leap friskily out of that long, curved mouth; it was at once a paradox and a bathos, it was the mouse coming out of its hole in Ely Cathedral. I said that this gravity was Monsieur Margot's most especial characteristic. I forgot; he had two others equally remarkable: the one was an ardent admiration for the chivalrous, the other an ardent admiration for himself. Both of these are traits common enough in a Frenchman, but in Monsieur Margot their excesses rendered them uncommon. He was a most ultra specimen of le chevalier amoureux, a mixture of Don Quixote and the Duc de Lauzun. Whenever he spoke of the present tense, even en professeur, he always gave a sigh to the preterite, and an anecdote of Bayard; whenever he conjugated a verb, he paused to tell me that the favorite one of his female pupils was je t'aime. In short, he had tales of his own good fortune, and of other people's brave exploits, which, without much exaggeration, were almost as long, and had, perhaps, as little substance as himself; but the former was his favorite topic. To hear him, one would have imagined that his face, in borrowing the sharpness of the needle, had borrowed also its attraction;-and then the prettiness of Monsieur Margot's modesty! "It is very extraordinary," said he, "very extraor VOL. I.-5 - dinary, for I have no time to give myself up to those affairs: it is not, Monsieur, as if I had your leisure to employ all the little preliminary arts of creating la belle passion. Non, Monsieur, I go to church, to the play, to the Tuileries, for a brief relaxation, and me voilà partout accablé with my good fortune. I am not handsome, Monsieur, - at least, not very; it is true that I have expression, a certain air noble (my first cousin, Monsieur, is the Chevalier de Margot), and, above all, soul in my physiognomy. The women love soul, Monsieur, something intellectual and spiritual always attracts them; yet my success certainly is singular." "Bah! Monsieur," replied I; " with dignity, expression, and soul, how could the heart of any Frenchwoman resist you? No, you do yourself injustice. It was said of Cæsar, that he was great without an effort; much more, then, may Monsieur Margot be happy without an exertion." "Ah, Monsieur!" rejoined the Frenchman, still looking "As weak, as earnest, and as gravely out As sober Lanesbro' dancing with the gout." "Ah, Monsieur, there is a depth and truth in your remarks, worthy of Montaigne. As it is impossible to account for the caprices of women, so it is impossible for ourselves to analyze the merit they discover in us; but, Monsieur, hear me, at the house where I lodge there is an English lady en pension. Eh bien, Monsieur, you guess the rest; she has taken a caprice for me, and this very night she will admit me to her apartment. She is very handsome, -ah, qu'elle est belle! une jolie petite bouche, une denture éblouissante, un nez tout à fait grec, in fine, quite a bouton de rose.” I expressed my envy at Monsieur Margot's good for tune, and when he had sufficiently dilated upon it, he withdrew. Shortly afterwards Vincent entered: "I have a dinner invitation for both of us to-day," said he; "you will come?" "Most certainly," replied I; " but who is the person we are to honor?" "A Madame Laurent," replied Vincent; one of those ladies only found at Paris, who live upon anything rather than their income. She keeps a tolerable table, haunted with Poles, Russians, Austrians, and idle Frenchmen, peregrine gentis amænum hospitium. As yet she has not the happiness to be acquainted with any Englishmen (though she boards one of our countrywomen), and (as she is desirous of making her fortune as soon as possible) she is very anxious of having that honor. She has heard vast reports of our wealth and wisdom, and flatters herself that we are so many ambulatory Indies: in good truth a Frenchwoman thinks she is never in want of a fortune as long as there's a rich fool in the world. 'Stultitiam patiuntur opes,' is her hope; and Ut tu fortunam, sic nos te, Celse, feremus,' is her motto." "Madame Laurent!" repeated I; "why, surely that is the name of Monsieur Margot's landlady." "I hope not," cried Vincent, " for the sake of our dinner; he reflects no credit on her good cheer, 'Who eats fat dinners, should himself be fat.'" "At all events," said I, "we can try the good lady for once. I am very anxious to see a country woman of ours, probably the very one you speak of, whom Monsieur Margot eulogizes in glowing colors, and who has, more |