the habit of dealing with frugal-minded people, and looking with content upon moderate prices. There are some houses along the Rue Madame and the Rue du Luxembourg giving, either front or rear, into the Luxembourg garden. That seemed a particularly attractive point. We had not been satiated with clipped vegetation and statuary at Versailles, only tantalized; and if we could have had the ancient domain of Catherine de Médicis under our eyes, it would have been worth while indeed. The sign "To Let" was hung out on a fresh-looking house in the Rue du Luxembourg. There was only a cinquième to be had, however. It was large enough, consisting of a salon, dining-room, three principal bedrooms, and the rest.

"And the price?" we asked the beaming concierge. A concierge, on first and brief acquaintance, is always beaming.

"Two thousand francs, m'seu et 'dame," she replied.

"That is the lowest price?' "Mon Dieu! one can always see the proprietor; there is no harm in that. There may be a small diminution."

Generally there is a small diminution on seeing the proprietor in person, but not very much. We thought two thousand francs for a fifth story too high in several senses, though I dare say, considering the accommodation, the rate was not excessive.

Accident led us into the pleasant quarter of the Invalides, which I doubt if we should ever have thought of looking up expressly. It remains a sort of still

see solid blocks of houses. The gilded dome of the Invalides presides over it, like a fine local planet, to take the place of the sun when that is missing, which is often. Numerous wide avenues, planted with quadruple or octuple rows of trees, cross at obtuse angles and make a sort of continuous garden. They abound in the names of heroes of the old régime, as the stout admirals Duquesne and De Suffren, the marshals De Villars and De Saxe, and keep the Invalides in general view as their objective point. It is a part, too, of the stately Faubourg Saint Germain, and there still remain a number of the fine old residences of great families of the faubourg, standing free in their own grounds. When we were settled, we were fortunate enough to have those of the Prince de Léon and the Count de Chambrun quite under our eyes, both real châteaux.

In the Place Saint François Xavier there was a ground floor for fourteen hundred francs. The rooms were large and fine; there was gas for cooking, as well as a range, and the house was exceptionally handsome. The entrance hall, for instance, was fifteen or twenty feet wide, and in tessellated marble. We should surely have made a good impression on our friends, in that house; but we agreed that there was something gloomy about a ground floor, no matter how many stories of basement might be under it, and nothing else was vacant there except at the very top, — I have noted it down as a seventh story, — which was to be had for twelve hundred francs. In another handsome house, just around the corner, on the Avenue de Villars, was a fifth story for eleven hundred and fifty francs. There were, naturally, more of these apartments than any others to rent. My impression, too, is, that the exposure of all these was rather northerly.

We found our affair at last about the corner of the Avenue Duquesne and the Avenue de Breteuil. It was an entresol

The

that caught our eye, that is to say, up only one pair of stairs, and for no more than eight hundred francs. house was fresh, and sufficiently comme il faut. There were shops under it, it is true, as there were not under those last mentioned; but it is the custom to have shops under your house, on the Continent. We were on the point of taking it. But why put too fine a point upon it? - we had taken it, and had to get out of it afterwards by means of considerable negotiation and an exchange. As the day was often gray, the matter of determining your exposure was apt to be difficult; and an unblushing concierge assured us that a flood of sunshine came pouring into that entresol. When we came actually to test it, we found that no ray of sun could ever reach it except in midsummer.

The alternative was a cinquième; the price the same. We climbed to it up a neat, well-kept staircase, waxed and polished. It cannot be gainsaid that it was a long pull, but it would have been impossible, I should think, not to be delighted with the brightness there, the quite remarkable view. There were the Place, the fine church, and the châteaux in front; the long lines of trees on the boulevard; the Invalides to the left, the artesian-well tower to the right, and notable monuments in the distance, even off to the dome of the Pantheon and the Tower of Saint Jacques. A balcony ran past our windows. It is the custom, in a great Paris house, to give a balcony only to the fifth story, partly out of compensation, I suppose, and to the first; the latter probably on the principle of overloading him that already hath. The morning sun came in, and was well reflected from the polished parquetry floors; the wall papers were in good taste; the dining-room was wainscoted; the little kitchen, which had half the look of an alchemist's laboratory, was tiled with blue tiles. When you were once there, nothing could be more cheer

ful. We took it, and as often as we went out among our various friends, now to spick-and-span - new Rue de Bassano, now to dark and narrow old Rue Notre Dame des Champs, and even - yes, even to Rue Marbeuf and Avenue Marceau, though these were pure luxury, and so out of the question, we always came back thinking our own apartment was much the best. No doubt, too, our friends, when they came to see us, all went away thinking theirs was much the best, and scolding at us for our stairs; which they continued to climb, nevertheless, with an amiable kindness I have often wondered at. Later on, I believe we were sometimes inclined to ask ourselves the use of all our stir about sunshine, when we found how little sun there really was in a Paris winter.

The rent did not include ten francs to the concierge, which it is necessary to pay to bind the bargain, twenty francs for water, sixteen francs for door and window tax, etc., nor fifty francs for a house tax, which we did not know about till the end of the year; so that the total was nearly nine hundred francs instead of eight hundred. But think what you would get for that sum, say one hundred and eighty dollars, in any American city! To be sure, the difference carries with it the sacrifice of various conveniences: you have the high staircase, the cooking is done by charcoal, you must burn lamps instead of gas, and you have no fixed bath-tubs, but must have recourse to portable bathtubs of your own. On the other hand, it is accompanied by respectability, whereas at home such a rent would mean impossible squalor. You pay a quarter's rent in advance, and, if you wish to go away, you are held to give a congé, or notice, of three months. Our quarter began the 15th of October, but, as the lodging stood vacant, we were allowed to take possession long before that time without extra charge.

One often admires the ingenuity of

The salon was about fifteen feet in width; the other dimensions can be judged of from that. The principal bedroom was well lighted from a large court, the kitchen and corridor from a small one. In the dining-room is seen the curious closet alcove for a bed, mentioned above. The three charcoal holes in the kitchen, to which various odd contrivances for roasting, etc., were adapted, proved insufficient for cooking, and we put in a small portable range, called, I may patriotically mention, a fourneau Américain.

The furnishing of our new domain, modest as it was, took more than a month, principally because we insisted upon picking up each piece separately, and trying to get pieces with something of a history. There were dealers, on the Avenue de Lamotte Piquet, about the Military School, and elsewhere, who rented furniture to officers, students, and others; but this plan, on examination, did not seem a cheap one. Our total outlay for furniture might have been something like four hundred dollars. This would have been high for, say, a single year, but, spread over all the years of our stay, it has been, even with expenses of moving it about from to place, an economy

as well as a comfort. May I state in a word my theory of furnishing? It might be called an impressionist theory. It is that the most really satisfactory result is the broadly decorative effects produced by color, contrast, general mass, and form, irrespective of the value of the materials. Beautiful textures and quality are so much the better if you can have them, but they are not necessary. This is an especially good traveling theory. So a considerable part of the expense went into stuffs, voiles de Gènes, etc., easy to roll up and carry along; into a lot of the fine large photographs of the Brogi collection, after the Italian galleries; and into Breton and other faïence, to put upon the wall, all of which, too, might well enough go back to America, one day. The salon was in white and yellow, with large-flowered chintzes of cheerful rosy hue; the picture frames were all made of the simplest and light est wood, flat, and covered with the same chintzes, which warmed the grave tones of the photographs, and carried the colors well into the walls. Chintzes in a tapestry pattern, none over sixteen sous a metre, went well with the greenish paper and redwood wainscot of the diningroom; and Louis XVI. chintzes, blue

and white, draped the alcove of the bed

room.

I obtained two good carved armchairs of the last century, style Jacob, from our upholsterer, who had them on sale. A harp-backed chair in nutwood came from a second-hand dealer near the ancient Hôtel Rambouillet, scene of famous literary and worldly reunions. Another honest dealer trundled over in a large handcart, from the Boulevard Henri Quatre, all across Paris, an Empire table and console, brass-mounted and gilded. He told us he had heard Americans never bargained. While he mopped his heated brow he related the experience of his shop in the day of the Commune. The windows were barricaded with mattresses, which became riddled with balls. The shop was finally burnt, and the government allowed him an indemnity of a third its value, which he discounted one half further, to have the money in a reasonable time. I shall not unfold all the secrets of our prison-house, but the effect of the furnishing was thought to be good by some who prided themselves on their taste in such matters.

The care of all this magnificence and of the household as described was entrusted to one Josephine, a femme de ménage. She lived near at hand, and had a husband, a cab-driver, and a small son of five, Eugène, who used to play below on the boulevard, as much as possible under her eye. We have seen her descend, in a fury, all the steep flights of stairs, to shake her finger at one Louis Morel, a bold playmate, who had given the small Eugène a claque, and then mount them again, with a healthy air of duty performed. The weak point with the femme de ménage is that she is a woman of family. Although she always declares in the beginning that her family is of such a sort as never to be seen or heard, it presently becomes an occasion for continual humoring, and the overshadowing interest in life. It soon

transpired, for instance, that little Eugène had nobody satisfactory to take care of him during his mother's absence, so she brought him with her, and kept him in the kitchen. We often used to hear him advising her, in an old-fashioned way, about the cooking; and sometimes the poor little chap was there till ten o'clock at night, and fell off his chair, dead beat with sleep. It was half pathetic, of course, but not in the least convenient for us; and every femme de ménage we tried or heard of had some impediment of that kind.

There were butchers, bakers, and grocers, all near at hand, who mounted the long staircase with our supplies and made nothing of the ascent. Twice a week, moreover, a regular market was pitched under a continuous light shed all along the Avenue de Breteuil, holes being left in the asphalt for its posts. The wagons and mules that brought it were parked along each side. It presented a novel and animated spectacle, well worth looking down upon, especially when S and Josephine, with the small Eugène in his blouse always in their train, could be discerned moving about there, sagaciously making their purchases. At three o'clock precisely it must disappear; after that hour, to buy or sell was an indictable offense. There was a filet, or net with handles, for carrying the marketing, which we thought another thing worthy to be of American invention, since, while carrying as much as a market basket, it could be rolled up when out of use and put in the pocket. Similar ambulant markets are set up in different parts of Paris, according to the days of the week, and it is well to note if you are going to have one at hand. I do not quite know how near S- was once to incurring the majestic displeasure of the two promenading sergents de ville for buying something after three o'clock.

"Put it down," said the market woman, coming to the rescue with a deft suggestion. And so the small object

A large saving in rent seemed evident, but we feared this might be counterbalanced by a greater cost of provisions. America is an agricultural land of plenty, and food would naturally be dearer in the countries to which it is forever exporting its surplus. On the contrary, we could not find that the cost of the necessaries of life here went much, if any, on the whole, above the range of New York prices. As there are few remarkable persons or astonishing adventures in this account, let us at least try to be useful. S informs me that good beef, mutton, and veal are at the rate of about twenty-two cents a pound; the choice filet, or tenderloin, being twice that. Butter is forty cents a pound, but it is always delicious fresh butter, and never the salted kind we have at home, which is not made here. Eggs are three sous apiece, but this when at their dearest, and every one perfect. Poultry is apt to be dear, but you have some new kinds of food as a resource in excellent rabbit and hare. One of the first dishes our Hortense made for us at Versailles was lapin sauté. The meat was white, resembling chicken; it was cooked in hot butter and bits of bacon, with a glass of red wine and fresh mushrooms in the sauce. When this was flanked by crisp fried potatoes and tender green beans, and followed by a delicious heap of red raspberries that cost comparatively nothing, treated with red wine and sugar, we thought that foreign life was opening auspiciously. Fruits of that sort and exquisite Reine Claude plums are plentiful and cheap. As much cannot be said of apples and peaches, and the latter, though alluring to the view, are almost always unripe. Salads and green vegetables generally, owing to the milder climate, are much longer in season, always cheaper, and frequently so low that you long for a capacity to consume un

heard-of quantities, for fear such an oc casion should never offer again. Milk is six cents a litre, a little more than a quart; only, in spite of the laws against adulteration, it is always of a thin quality, and you can hardly get it with the cream remaining, no matter how much you are willing to pay for it. Wineah! but is it wine in our days? Since the phylloxera ruined the vineyards, the problem of what to drink is a serious one, the water being esteemed bad. Every American family resolves it in its own

way.

So here we have a certain basis for comparison. S- , in summing up the general subject, calls attention to two characteristic things of important bearing. The first is the absence of ice, which is so indispensable in America; you soon begin not to give it even a thought, and to feel better without it. The absence of ice and ice-boxes for preserving provisions brings it about that these are purchased in much smaller quantities. It is the received thing to buy only enough for the day's use, and buying in small quantities is a distinct advantage and economy for small families, since it gives them plenty of variety without extravagance. The meats are cut differently, and everything else is adapted to this system. You can buy excellent juicy roast beef to the value of a franc and a half, if you like, whereas the very smallest piece two people could buy at home, without being ridiculous, would have to keep reappearing in various forms for several days.

"On the servant question," S says, "you may put in that, though Josephine would get no more than forty francs and her board if we kept her altogether, that is, though servants' wages are much lower over here, one good servant in America would do as much as two or three here. It would not be all her own merit, either, for the houses in America are better arranged for housekeeping. For instance, there is