Paris is everything that is attractive, and gay. He resents, as a personal insult, the pretensions of other nations to compete with his.
Now, Madame Blot, who never was out of Paris in the course of her life, is exceedingly touchy on this point; and not being aware of her weakness, I was constantly giving offence, which was quite unintentional on my part, and, it must be said, as soon forgiven on hers. But, in the course of ten minutes of one unlucky day, I said three unpardonable things, creating a wound that did not heal for a whole fortnight. First: I preferred English bacon to French—a dreadful heresy. Secondly: I had not seen a better looking woman in France than the Empress, forgetting she was a Spaniard. And the third unlucky remark referred to the expressive way the French have of shrugging their shoulders and raising their hands as high as the waist, at the same time turning out the palms. This they do when they have no words to express their ideas, or no ideas to express, or when they wish to finish the argument. I went through the motion, remarking that it said a hundred things.
Madame, who, without my observing it, had felt hurt at my admiration of the Empress and English bacon, now thought that I was imitating her when I shrugged my shoulders. She boiled up at once, and bounced out of the kitchen to her seat near the window, where I could see her working furiously at the endless border. Next day, when I hung my key on the board in the bureau, she was so huffy that I told Blot I would dine en ville for a short time.
There was a M. de Falaise, or some such name, who, during the Exibition in 1851, brought a letter of introduction to me in London. I took lodgings for him, and gave him a dinner or two at the club. In return, he hoped I would call upon him if ever I was in Paris; and meeting him a day or two after the row with Madame, he said he would be glad to introduce me to Madame de Falaise, who gave a ball every other Thursday. “Would I go to the next?”
There is no society more expensive than that which one gets for nothing, and hitherto I had avoided going into society on that account. But I thanked him, and went.
The ladies were plain enough, but they were studies, quite pictures in dress. They were friendly at once, and agreeable without formality. Madame de Falaise introduced me to some other French families, and, at the end of the week I had been to four balls and a dinner. Here was success! But could I afford it? I had to buy a new hat with a white lining, for my old Donaldson was too bad for anything, and could not be concealed by even a broad band, worn for an imaginary relative who died about that time. At a ball in Paris a man does not part with his hat till he has asked a lady to dance, and he then places it in her chair, which is thereby kept for her till the dance is over. I was rather ashamed of Donaldson on the first occasion,—he was left alone on a fauteuil of white satin trimmed with pink silk cording—and next morning I gave twenty-two francs for a new hat. Besides this sum, which came, as it were, out of the capital account, there were three francs every night for gloves; two francs for a cab there, and the same back, not including the pourboire—seven francs for the night’s amusement!
And then I was led by Louis Velay to visit, by gaslight, several of the low parts of Paris,—a subject to which, not being required in his examination, he had paid great attention. And thus it was that in taking stock of the finances at the end of fourteen days, I found I had spent my whole month’s allowance.
I could see Madame Blot was wishing for a reconciliation.
Marguerite asked me one day, on meeting her between the hotel and her mother’s shop, “How it was that I had deserted my old friends?” This was rather good, but she had probably been deputed to ask the question; and as she believes everything that is said to her, of course she was satisfied that it was I that was offended. On leaving the key of my room in the bureau next morning, and, as usual of late, merely bowing to Madame without speaking, she made me a gracious bow, and ended by hoping she would soon see me again in my old place in the kitchen. I was not sorry to get back, for genteel society had played harlequin with my finances, and we became better friends than before. I managed her better afterwards. When she was at all touchy, or less amiable than usual, I used to flatter her and her country; French beauty and French bacon—everything at dinner and everything she had on—and I never paid her a compliment too large for her swallow.
I gave up genteel society, and contented myself with Rampse, and my friends in the kitchen.
ORCHIDS OR AIR PLANTS.
It is not easy at all times to say where vegetable life ends, and animal life begins; and were we required to determine the line of separation between merely organic and sentient life, by the distinctive forms of each, the recently discovered forms of vegetable life would greatly increase the difficulty. Resemblances to external forms of animal life exist in several portions of the vegetable world, but they abound in Orchidaceous plants, the latest, rarest, richest, and most beautiful addition to our floral treasures. No poet’s dream ever pictured a more perfect metamorphosis than many of the flowers of this rich and brilliant order of plants exhibit. Science teaches us that in the order in which the world we inhabit was furnished, the vegetable preceded the animal occupants; and if a metamorphosis in nature, such as that adverted to, could be allowed, and the forms of animal life appeared first in the vegetable world, very intelligible vestiges of creation might be presented, and the development theory might be set forth as a more simple and natural process than it has hitherto appeared. But leaving these and other recondite suppositions, it is sufficient for our present purpose to contemplate these singular and beautiful plants where we find them, constituting the most gorgeous and wonderful ornaments with which our world is adorned.
