LINES

LINESOccasioned by the death of the Count Borowlaski, a Polish dwarf, whose height was under thirty-six inches, and who died at Durham, on the 5th of September last, aged ninety-eight.A spirit brave, yet gentle, has dwelt, as it appears,Within three feet of flesh for near one hundred years;Which causes wonder, like his constitution, strong,That one soshort aliveshould bealive so long!J.S.

Occasioned by the death of the Count Borowlaski, a Polish dwarf, whose height was under thirty-six inches, and who died at Durham, on the 5th of September last, aged ninety-eight.

A spirit brave, yet gentle, has dwelt, as it appears,Within three feet of flesh for near one hundred years;Which causes wonder, like his constitution, strong,That one soshort aliveshould bealive so long!

A spirit brave, yet gentle, has dwelt, as it appears,

Within three feet of flesh for near one hundred years;

Which causes wonder, like his constitution, strong,

That one soshort aliveshould bealive so long!

J.S.

A CHAPTER ON WIDOWS.Widows! A very ticklish subject to handle, no doubt; but one on which a great deal may be said. An interesting subject, too,—what more so? What class of persons in the universe so interesting as weed-wearing women? We are not sure that on paper they have ever been treated as they deserve. We don't think they have been considered as they ought to be: their past, their present, and their future, have not been speculated upon; their position in the world has not been decided. They have simply been spoken ofaswidows, in the gross: the various circumstances of widowhood have never been distinguished; as if those circumstances did not subdivide and classify, giving peculiar immunities to some, and fixing peculiar obligations on others; as if every good woman who has the fortune, or misfortune, to call in an undertaker, is placed in precisely the same situation as far as society is concerned, or ought to be judged or guided by the same rules. We shall begin with a definition; not because any one can doubt what a widow is, but because we have a reason.A widow is—"a woman who has lost her husband." We must here premise that it is no part of our present plan to say a syllable about those whose husbands have taken themselves off—the dear departed,—and not been heard of, Heaven knows how long: nor of those who have lost the affection, and attention, and care of their husbands; for, however much they may be widows as to the comforts and endearments of married life, they are not widows for our purpose.We shall define a widow in other words. A widow is—"a woman whose husband is dead." This would not be sufficiently intelligible unless we were to add "dead by due course of nature, accident, or physic," because there is such a thing as a man being dead in law; and as we have ever carefully eschewed all things pertaining, directly or indirectly, to that dangerous "essence," as far as volition could assist us, so we intend to eschew them. We mean, then, dead in fact, and comfortably buried, or otherwise safely disposed of.And now, having settled a definition, let us proceed to the division of our subject.We propose to treat of young widows, middle-aged widows, and old widows; to speak of them the truth, and nothing but the truth, and, if not the whole of it, sufficient we trust to show that they have merited our attention.A young widow must be on the tender side of twenty-eight; the tough side begins, and ten additional years limit, middle-aged widowhood; while all from thirty-eight to a hundred must take rank, in this army at least, as granny-dears.A young widow!—to what emotions of tenderness and pity do these words give rise! With what a vivid scene of wretchedness is the mind oppressed! Do they not tell us a tale—and how briefly too!—of joy and sorrow, rejoicing and wailing?—happy anticipations and blighted hopes crowded into one little space? In our mind's eye, we see a fair and blushing bride, an animated ardent bridegroom,a group of happy friends, favours, and festivals; in the background of the picture, a grave. One is missing from the party, never to return; gone from the light and warmth of love, to the cold but constant embrace of the tomb,—from thefew livingto themany dead! The atmosphere was sweet, and life-instilling; an arc of promise was above us: that arc has vanished, that atmosphere has changed,—it is thick, oppressive, dank! Hope's lamp flickers, as if it would go out for ever.This is undoubtedly the cambric-pocket-handkerchief view of the matter, making, as some would say, the "devils" very blue indeed; but it is one that strikes many, perhaps all, who are not of a fishy or froggy temperament: at the same time, we will admit the brush is dipped in the darkest colours, and that we might have been a little less sombre by imagining the defunct a fat and apoplectic old fool, who had only decided upon going to church when he ought to have been looking to the church-yard; in which case, "a young widow," instead of drawing on the deep wells of the heart, draws upon our cheerful congratulations, and stands forth "redeemed, regenerated, and disenthralled by the irresistible genius of universal emancipation."Whether under the melancholy or the happy circumstances to which we have alluded, a young widow is a very different being to what she has ever been before; in identity of person she is the same, but there is no identity of position; as regards society, there is no identity of rights, privileges, licences, or liabilities. The great difference as regards herself is, that, for the first time in her life, she is her own protector: many things that she could not do as a girl, and dare not do as a wife, are now open to her. She has been "made a woman of," and is a very independent person. After languishing a fitting time in calm retirement and seclusion, having "that within which passeth outward show," she reappears to the world decked in "the trappings and the suits of woe." We purposely use the word "decked," because in its most familiar sense it implies "adorned," at least as applied to the "craft" we are now convoying. We should very much like to be told, and very much like to see, a more interesting sight than a young widow, when, after having been laid up in ordinary the ordinary time, she leaves her moorings, in proper "rig and trim," to prosecute the remainder of the voyage of life. The black flag is up, and no doubt she means mischief; but all is fair and above board. No mystery is made of the metal she carries, the port she is bound for. She may take a prize, or make one; but it must be by great gallantry if she is captured.To drop metaphor: a young widow is, we repeat, an extremely delightful and highly privileged creature. Mark her in society,—we do not care how limited or how extensive,—and she bears the palm in the interest that is excited. We will give a showy animated girl of eighteen the benefit of a first appearance; we will allow her to have excited the attention of the room, to be the observed of all observers; every one shall be asking, "Who is the young lady in pink crape?"—she shall have danced and sung herself into full-blown importance,—she shall have turned as many heads as she has times in her waltzing;—and then, a little late in the evening, we will introduce, very quietly,—no loud double knocking at the door, no voices of servantsechoing her name, no rustling of silks or satins,—a young widow! just "one year off;" she shall slide gently into the room, seeming to shun observation, as they all do, (lest perchance some ill-natured person should wonder what business they have there,)—and, contented with a simple recognition from her host or hostess, she shall occupy some "silent nook," and rest satisfied in its shade. Presently, some one shall chance tospeakof her as "a young widow,"—the lady of the house, for instance, who usually occupies every leisure moment in informing groups of her old visitors the names and et-ceteras of her young ones,—she shall happen to say, "Excuse me one moment, Imustgo and speak to poor Mrs. Willow.""PoorMrs. Willow!—what can that mean?" wonder all who hear it.And then the lady comes back, and explains that Mrs. W. is a widow."Poor thing!" says one."Only think!" says another."How very young!" says a third."Any children?" asks a fourth."I thought she looked melancholy!" observes a fifth; and then, after staring at the object of their commiseration and curiosity sufficiently long to be sure they will know her again, they separate with the view of advertising the interesting intelligence. It being known to four old women, and one middle-aged man who doesn't dance, it speedily spreads over the whole room; and, provided no one intimates off-hand a superior case of affliction in the person of any one present, the young widow has to bear the brunt of a very wholesale inspection. There is also a great deal of wonder; people wonder in classes:—the elderly, What her husband died of,—the young ladies, Whether she has any family,—the gentlemen, Whether she has any money. During all this wonderment, "the young lady in pink crape" is entirely forgotten.Now, if the young widow should happen to feel at all "at home," and chooses to "come out" a little, mark what follows: "the young lady in pink crape" has to dance the remainder of the evening with red-haired, freckled, pock-marked, snub-nosed, flat-footed fellows, with whom she would not have touched gloves an hour ago, while all the stylish staff that then surrounded her, are doing homage at another shrine.And no wonder!—A girl may be very agreeable and "all that," as people say when they want to cut description short; but it's impossible she can hold a candle to a young widow. She is obliged to be circumspect in all she says,—to weigh every word,—to cripple her conversation, lest she should be thought forward; but, worse than this, she is so deuced simple and credulous, that a man with a fine flowing tongue is apt to mislead her, and place himself in a false position before he gets through a set of quadrilles; whereas with the other partner it istout au contraire. "Old birds are not to be caught with chaff;" and old the youngest widow is, in "the ways of men," compared with the bread-and-butter portion of the unmarried world. You may rattle on as much as you please, so may she; you neither of you mean anything, and both of you know it: besides, no one has a right to forbid it; you are your own master, she herown mistress. Dance ten times in an evening with her, and call in the morning. What then!—she has her own house, her own servants. What more?—she is—able to take care of herself.So much for a young widow in society, or those scenes of life in which the actors and actresses play more immediately against one another; scenes in which tragedy, comedy, melo-drama, and farce—the last predominating—are brought before us. Now, if we step behind the scenes, and look a little into the privacy of the domestic circle, and observe her as one of the "select few," we fancy we shall still find her maintaining her pre-eminence as an intelligent companion and delightful friend. When we use the term "intelligent," we do not presume to say that she is necessarily more acute than she was as a coy maiden, or than the virgin of our acquaintance, as touching any branch of historical, artistical, or scientific information; but we mean intelligent in an unobtrusive but every-day-available knowledge of "men and things,"—in other words, a knowledge of the world. She has pushed off from shore, and has learnt a little of the current of life, its eddies, shoals, and quicksands. She has lost the dangerous confidence of inexperience, without having acquired an uncharitable distrust; and smiles at the greenness of girlhood, without assuming the infallibility of age. She is not too old to have sympathy for youth, nor so young as to slight the experience of years. In her past, joy and sorrow have commingled; in her future, hope is chastened by reason.Some imaginative people of bygone centuries decided that fire produced all things, and that this fire was inclosed in the earth. Of fire, Vesta was the goddess; or, as the Romans sometimes thought, Vesta herself was fire. Ovid is our authority for this:"Nec tu aliud Vestam quàm vivam intellige flammam."The same gentleman, also, synonymizes her with another element:"—— Tellus Vestaque numen idem est."Now, whether Vesta was fire, or fire Vesta, or whether the earth and Vesta were one and the same fire, we are not in a condition to determine; and as there are no muniments of any Insurance Office to throw light on the matter,—even the "Sun" had not then begun business in this line,—the curiosity of the curious must remain unquenched. This, however we know, that Vesta's waiting-women;—we beg their pardon, the goddess's lady's-maids,—the Vestales of her Temple, had, beyond the usual routine of their business, such as dressing and undressing her; waiting her whims, and getting up her linen, the onerous charge of watching and guarding the holy fire, and lighting it once a year, whether it required lighting or not. The first of March was the appointed day for this ceremony; though the first of April might have been, under all the circumstances, a more appropriate anniversary. We have no distinct records as to whether these young women were familiar with the application of flint and steel to tinder, or whether the royal-born Lucifer had, in those days, taken out a patent for his matches; there is little reason for regret, however, in this uncertainty, inasmuch as neither the one nor the other could have been made use of. The holy fire might be suppliedfrom no common flame, and they had therefore to ask "the favour of a light" from the pure and unpolluted rays of the Sun.Now we humbly conceive that our motive for introducing this interesting little classical episode must be obvious from its conclusion.We were talking of one—though certainly not in any probability a Vestal virgin—whose "sacred flame" had gone out, and we felt we should be expected to say something of its re-lighting. Thinking, preparatory to writing, we recollected all that wehavewritten, and we were interested and amused with the identity of means employed for a common end two thousand years ago and in the present day; as it then was, so it now is, managed byattraction.It has just occurred to our reflective mind, that the imaginative people before-mentioned must have been figurative also; and meant by earth, human clay,—and by the fire therein, love. We should like to know what love willnotdo; and, until we are told, we shall deem it capable, as the ancients did fire, of producing everything.And now a few words upon the marriage of a young widow. We might be expected to discuss the question of second marriages generally, and weigh the arguments pro and con,—the romance against the reality of life; but we decline doing so at present, on the ground that, right or wrong, young widows at any rate have ever had, if possible, and even will have, a second string to their bow, should grim Death rudely snap the first,—a second arrow to their quiver, should the first be lost "beyond recovery."She marries again,—may we say, loves? If she has loved before, we may not.Heis in the grave, and her "heart is in the coffin there." But she marries; and, though she may exclaim,"No more—no more,—oh! never more on meThe freshness of the heart can fall like dew,"in the spirit of the words,—she takes nothing from their truth by substituting one reading for another:"No more—no more,—oh! never more on meThegreennessof the heart," &c.And this, there is no doubt, she does, as she embarks in matrimony with comfortable confidence a second time.It is believed that many very sensible men have married young widows. Without saying whether we believe it, we may observe thatwehave never done anything of the kind, and never intend. This declaration is not inconsistent with perfect sincerity in all we have said. We have been treating of young widowsaswidows, not as wives. Our objections to any transformation on our own account are many; we shall give only one,—our extreme diffidence and modesty, which would never allow us to be judged by comparison as to the essentials of a good husband. So strong, indeed, is our feeling on this point, that, notwithstanding our extreme prepossession in their favour, we verily believe that the most fascinating relict that ever lived, with the best fortune that was ever funded, might say to us by her manner, as plainly as a brass-plate on a street-door, "Please to ring the bell-e," only to suffer defeat and disappointment.And now we approach the second division, and proceed to pay ourrespects to middle-aged widows; generally, stout, healthy-looking women with seven children. We have omitted, by-the-bye, to observe, that young widows cannot have more than two, or at the most three, without losing caste. Seven children form a very interesting family, and confer considerable importance on their proprietor, of whose melancholy bereavement they are perpetual advertisements. In proportion to the number of pledges presented to a husband, is a wife's love for him; or, if this be not invariable, at any rate in proportion to her little ones is her sorrow for his loss; particularly when he dies leaving nothing behind him but the "regret of a large circle of friends." For some time, the afflicted woman places great reliance on an extensive sympathy, and has very little doubt that some one will some day do something: godfathers and godmothers rise into importance, and directors of the Blue-coat School are at a premium. If she be fortunate, her motherly pride is gratified before long by gazing on her first-born with a trimmed head and yellow cotton stockings; and by this time she generally finds out she has nothing more to expect from any one but—herself.We have begun with the poor and heavily-burthened middle-aged widows, because they are by far the most numerous of the class. It is a singular thing, that we seldom meet with a middle-aged widow with a small family, or a large provision. The young and the old are frequently wealthy; not so the other unfortunates. We suppose the reason of this is, that the harassing cares of an increasing family kill off a prodigious number of men; and, inasmuch as these cares would not have existed had Fortune been propitious, they make their exit in poverty.Occasionally, however, we meet with a middle-aged widow without children, and with fortune, or a comfortable independence. Of such a one we shall say a word or two. Generally speaking, she looks with extreme resignation on the affliction that has overtaken her; and, when she speaks of it, does so in the most Christian spirit. Of all widows, she is the most sure that "everything is for the best;" and, as she has no living duplicates of the lost original, her bosom is less frequently rent by recollections of the past. Anxious, however, to prove her appreciation of the holy state, and offer the best testimony of her sense of one good husband, she rarely omits taking a second; and, purely to diminish the chance of having twice in her life to mourn the loss of her heart's idol, she generally selects one some ten or fifteen years younger than herself. We say "selects," because it is very well known, that, though maids are wooed, widows are not. The first time a woman marries is very frequently to please another; the second time, invariably herself: she therefore takes the whole management of the matter into her own hands. We think that this is quite as it should be: it stands to reason that a woman of seven or eight and thirty, who has been married, should know a great deal more about married life than a young gentleman of twenty-five, who has not. And then he gets a nice motherly woman to take care of him, and keep him out of mischief, and has the interest of her money to forward him in his profession or business,—the principal has been too carefully settled on the lady to be in any risk.We do occasionally encounter some "rara avis in terris"—a middle-aged widow who thinks nothing of further matrimony; and so convincedare we of the "dangerous tendency" of such characters, that we would at once consign them to perpetual imprisonment. If they declared their resolution in time, we would undoubtedly try it, by burying them with their first lover, or burning them Hindoo fashion; for, supposing them to have no children, to what possible good end can they propose to live? It is our firm belief that they know too much to be at perfect liberty, with safety to society; and they must of necessity be so thoroughly idle, beyond knitting purses and reading novels, as to make mischief the end and aim of their existence. We ask fearlessly of our readers this question—"Did you ever in your lives know an unmarrying, middle-aged, childless widow, who was not a disagreeable, slanderous, and strife-inducing creature?" If you ever did, you ought to have tickled her to death,—so as to have avoided disfigurement,—and sent her in a glass-case to the British Museum.Perhaps it will be said by some, that they have known such a woman as we have just enquired about, and that they don't think she merited any such fate; perhaps they will say that she was a very harmless, pleasant person, and only remained single because she held her heart sacred to her departed lord. Cross-grained and ugly middle-aged widows may occasionally foster this romance; as also may those whose husbands have exemplified by their wills that jealousy may outlive life, by decreeing that their flower should lose its sweetness upon another presuming to wear it,—in other words, that, upon a second marriage, the worldly advantages of the first should determine.There is a class of men in the world, who go through two-thirds of their life single, and who, if you were to believe them, never entertain the remotest notion of being "bothered with a wife." In some instances this arises from an early indulgence in dissipation; and, from keeping very equivocal company. In their own opinion they are extremely knowing, and are continually wondering "how men can make such asses of themselves" as to put their necks into the matrimonial noose; if you attempt to argue with them on the stupidity, if not baseness of their creed, they assure you confidently that "women are all alike." We once made a fellow of this sort ashamed of himself, when, having ended a long tirade, which was a coarse amplification of Pope's line,"But every woman is at heart a rake,"we asked him, with sufficient emphasis, "Who his mother and sisters werelivingwith?"Another portion of the ring-renouncers are men who are so abominably selfish, that they would not share an atom of their worldly substance with the most perfect specimen of "the precious porcelain of human clay" that the world could produce them;—men who look with horror on the expenses of an establishment, and live in miserable hugger-muggery on some first-floor, sponging on their friends to the extremity of meanness;—men who look upon children with as much horror as that with which they would view a fall in the funds or the stoppage of their banker, and see nothing in them but a draft upon their pockets.There is yet another body of solitaries, much smaller in numberthough, than either of the other two;—men who underrate themselves, and who are so extremely diffident and bashful as never to have "popped the question," though their tongues have often had the itch to do it;—men who people their room, as they sit over the fire, with an amiable woman and half-a-dozen little ones, and, when they rub their eyes into the reality of their nothingness, sigh for the happiness of some envied friend. It was necessary that we should make this digression.We left the middle-aged widow with a large family and small means, convinced that, having got one child provided for,—enabling every one to speak of a kind act as though they had something to do with it,—she had then only to rely upon herself. Shedoesrely upon herself; and, in nine hundred and ninety-nine cases out of a thousand, her own resources are sufficient to change her state. Men may make fools of girls, but women make fools of men. In this work of retribution, middle-aged widows with families pre-eminently take the lead. They work particularly on those gentlemen whom we have here introduced; and more particularly and successfully on the first and third class, though the second are not unfrequently made examples of. It will be said that the first class are fools to hand: so they are; and, when caught, they find it out themselves. They are flies, buzzing about and blowing every fair fame they are not scared from. The widow spreads her web of flattery and flirtation; and when the poor insect ventures boldly in, confident that he can at any moment "take wing and away," she rolls him round and round in her meshes, as a spider does a blue-bottle,—or, to use a very expressive idiom, she "twists him round her finger," ring-shape. The consequential, slanderous, and boasting booby sinks into the insignificance of a caged monkey, and lives and dies a miserable Jerry Sneak! Look into society, and you will find many of them.We admit it is a hard fate for a man, whose only failing, perhaps, has been his modesty, to be secured for the purpose of feeding the hungry and clothing the naked; but then it must be remembered that, had not a widow proposed to him, he would never have had courage to propose to anybody, and that he gets a companion for life and a ready-made family, instead of lingering on in envy and despair.Seeing that we have called all widows old, who are on the grave side of forty, we feel that we have the most difficult portion of our subject to discuss,—difficult, and, we may add, delicate, because so very few of those who are obnoxious to what we may say, will be inclined to admit it; indeed, if we had any hope of getting over this difficulty by throwing in ten or fifteen years more, we would do so, and date only from fifty or fifty-five. We know, however, that this would not extricate us, and so prefer adhering to our original scale. Widows of forty and upwards command very little of the sympathy that waits on those bereaved in earlier life. The reason of this, perhaps, is, that they are not themselves so interesting. It is astonishing how much we feel through our eyes. We are told that "Pity is akin to love," and we might enter into some curious speculations as to the various deductions to be drawn from these words. Supposing we see a young creature of one-and-twenty, in all the freshness of life and first grief, who has buried a lover in a husbandafter two or three years of unalloyed happiness; she has an infant, perhaps, in each arm. Do we pity her? Deeply,—acutely; we could almost weep for her. Well; we meet a woman in the autumn of life, whose summer has been passed with the first and only object of her affections; hearts that yearned towards each other in youth, time has made one; in every inclination, wish, hope, fear, they have heightened the pleasures of life by a mutual enjoyment of them, and alleviated its sorrows by sharing them together. Death has divorced them, and we see her—alone! We are very sorry for her, and her four or five children; it is "a sad loss:"—we say so, and of course we mean it; but are we as sensitive to this picture as to that?If we make second marriages a principal feature in this dissertation on widows, we do so because it is their "being's end and aim," as is incontrovertibly proved by their all but universality. Old widows, even if poor, sometimes lend an able hand in the retaliation of which we have before spoken; but, unfortunately, they also very frequently, when they happen to have wealth, become themselves objects of scorn and derision. Perhaps the most offensive creature in existence, and, save one, the most contemptible, is the worn-out, toothless, hairless, wrinkled jade, who attempts,"—— Unholy mimickry of Nature's work!To recreate, with frail and mortal things,Her withered face;"and then, upon the strength of a long purse, puts herself up, a decayed vessel, to Dutch auction, herself proclaiming what she is worth, to be knocked down—we are almost unmanly enough to wish it were not figuratively—to some needy young spendthrift, of whose grandmother she must have been a juvenile contemporary. Widows of this stamp are almost always women raised from low stations, from whom, perhaps, little delicacy or refinement is to be expected. There is hardly a season in which some carcase-butcher's or grocer's wealthy relict is not the talk, and wonder, and emetic of the town.We must not conclude with exceptions, however, where they create so unfavourable an impression; we will rather turn to those portly and obliging widows who, after looking a little about them as single women, fall in with some comfortable old gentleman who very much wants a housekeeper, and somebody to mix his grog o' nights, and at once agree to take the situation. The old boy puts all his affairs into her hands, and they rub on together cosily enough the remainder of their days. Every one admits it to be "a very suitable match;" if an objection be made by anybody, it merely comes from some expectant nephews or nieces.Therearewidows we think, we must admit it, who, widows once, remain so for ever, and from inclination, or rather from disinclination to encourage any impression, or even thought, that might weaken or interfere with the memory of the past; but we must repeat that they are never young, and rarely middle-aged widows: they are women past the meridian of their days, whose griefs, not violent or obtrusive, have yet been solemn and absorbing; women who have lost the vanity of believing they can accommodate themselves to any man; and, dwelling on the happiness theyhaveenjoyed, cherish its recollection as an act of devotion to one "not dead, but gone before."They wear their "weeds" as long as they are of this world; and there is always a quietness, if not gravity of demeanour, that perfectly assorts with them. In society they are always respected; by those who know them, loved; they do not hesitate to talk of their married life, and live over many of its scenes, to those who are interested in listening: herein they differ from married widows, if we may use the expression, who very rarely talk of their first union to any one but their husbands; they, perhaps, hear of it something too much, and too often!And now, having passed our compliments and paid our respects, we must take our leave. We have been guilty of one rudeness,—we have had all the talk to ourselves: in return, we promise to be patient listeners, should any fair controversialist think fit to propound her views on this "highly-interesting and important subject."

Widows! A very ticklish subject to handle, no doubt; but one on which a great deal may be said. An interesting subject, too,—what more so? What class of persons in the universe so interesting as weed-wearing women? We are not sure that on paper they have ever been treated as they deserve. We don't think they have been considered as they ought to be: their past, their present, and their future, have not been speculated upon; their position in the world has not been decided. They have simply been spoken ofaswidows, in the gross: the various circumstances of widowhood have never been distinguished; as if those circumstances did not subdivide and classify, giving peculiar immunities to some, and fixing peculiar obligations on others; as if every good woman who has the fortune, or misfortune, to call in an undertaker, is placed in precisely the same situation as far as society is concerned, or ought to be judged or guided by the same rules. We shall begin with a definition; not because any one can doubt what a widow is, but because we have a reason.

A widow is—"a woman who has lost her husband." We must here premise that it is no part of our present plan to say a syllable about those whose husbands have taken themselves off—the dear departed,—and not been heard of, Heaven knows how long: nor of those who have lost the affection, and attention, and care of their husbands; for, however much they may be widows as to the comforts and endearments of married life, they are not widows for our purpose.

We shall define a widow in other words. A widow is—"a woman whose husband is dead." This would not be sufficiently intelligible unless we were to add "dead by due course of nature, accident, or physic," because there is such a thing as a man being dead in law; and as we have ever carefully eschewed all things pertaining, directly or indirectly, to that dangerous "essence," as far as volition could assist us, so we intend to eschew them. We mean, then, dead in fact, and comfortably buried, or otherwise safely disposed of.

And now, having settled a definition, let us proceed to the division of our subject.

We propose to treat of young widows, middle-aged widows, and old widows; to speak of them the truth, and nothing but the truth, and, if not the whole of it, sufficient we trust to show that they have merited our attention.

A young widow must be on the tender side of twenty-eight; the tough side begins, and ten additional years limit, middle-aged widowhood; while all from thirty-eight to a hundred must take rank, in this army at least, as granny-dears.

A young widow!—to what emotions of tenderness and pity do these words give rise! With what a vivid scene of wretchedness is the mind oppressed! Do they not tell us a tale—and how briefly too!—of joy and sorrow, rejoicing and wailing?—happy anticipations and blighted hopes crowded into one little space? In our mind's eye, we see a fair and blushing bride, an animated ardent bridegroom,a group of happy friends, favours, and festivals; in the background of the picture, a grave. One is missing from the party, never to return; gone from the light and warmth of love, to the cold but constant embrace of the tomb,—from thefew livingto themany dead! The atmosphere was sweet, and life-instilling; an arc of promise was above us: that arc has vanished, that atmosphere has changed,—it is thick, oppressive, dank! Hope's lamp flickers, as if it would go out for ever.

This is undoubtedly the cambric-pocket-handkerchief view of the matter, making, as some would say, the "devils" very blue indeed; but it is one that strikes many, perhaps all, who are not of a fishy or froggy temperament: at the same time, we will admit the brush is dipped in the darkest colours, and that we might have been a little less sombre by imagining the defunct a fat and apoplectic old fool, who had only decided upon going to church when he ought to have been looking to the church-yard; in which case, "a young widow," instead of drawing on the deep wells of the heart, draws upon our cheerful congratulations, and stands forth "redeemed, regenerated, and disenthralled by the irresistible genius of universal emancipation."

Whether under the melancholy or the happy circumstances to which we have alluded, a young widow is a very different being to what she has ever been before; in identity of person she is the same, but there is no identity of position; as regards society, there is no identity of rights, privileges, licences, or liabilities. The great difference as regards herself is, that, for the first time in her life, she is her own protector: many things that she could not do as a girl, and dare not do as a wife, are now open to her. She has been "made a woman of," and is a very independent person. After languishing a fitting time in calm retirement and seclusion, having "that within which passeth outward show," she reappears to the world decked in "the trappings and the suits of woe." We purposely use the word "decked," because in its most familiar sense it implies "adorned," at least as applied to the "craft" we are now convoying. We should very much like to be told, and very much like to see, a more interesting sight than a young widow, when, after having been laid up in ordinary the ordinary time, she leaves her moorings, in proper "rig and trim," to prosecute the remainder of the voyage of life. The black flag is up, and no doubt she means mischief; but all is fair and above board. No mystery is made of the metal she carries, the port she is bound for. She may take a prize, or make one; but it must be by great gallantry if she is captured.

To drop metaphor: a young widow is, we repeat, an extremely delightful and highly privileged creature. Mark her in society,—we do not care how limited or how extensive,—and she bears the palm in the interest that is excited. We will give a showy animated girl of eighteen the benefit of a first appearance; we will allow her to have excited the attention of the room, to be the observed of all observers; every one shall be asking, "Who is the young lady in pink crape?"—she shall have danced and sung herself into full-blown importance,—she shall have turned as many heads as she has times in her waltzing;—and then, a little late in the evening, we will introduce, very quietly,—no loud double knocking at the door, no voices of servantsechoing her name, no rustling of silks or satins,—a young widow! just "one year off;" she shall slide gently into the room, seeming to shun observation, as they all do, (lest perchance some ill-natured person should wonder what business they have there,)—and, contented with a simple recognition from her host or hostess, she shall occupy some "silent nook," and rest satisfied in its shade. Presently, some one shall chance tospeakof her as "a young widow,"—the lady of the house, for instance, who usually occupies every leisure moment in informing groups of her old visitors the names and et-ceteras of her young ones,—she shall happen to say, "Excuse me one moment, Imustgo and speak to poor Mrs. Willow."

"PoorMrs. Willow!—what can that mean?" wonder all who hear it.

And then the lady comes back, and explains that Mrs. W. is a widow.

"Poor thing!" says one.

"Only think!" says another.

"How very young!" says a third.

"Any children?" asks a fourth.

"I thought she looked melancholy!" observes a fifth; and then, after staring at the object of their commiseration and curiosity sufficiently long to be sure they will know her again, they separate with the view of advertising the interesting intelligence. It being known to four old women, and one middle-aged man who doesn't dance, it speedily spreads over the whole room; and, provided no one intimates off-hand a superior case of affliction in the person of any one present, the young widow has to bear the brunt of a very wholesale inspection. There is also a great deal of wonder; people wonder in classes:—the elderly, What her husband died of,—the young ladies, Whether she has any family,—the gentlemen, Whether she has any money. During all this wonderment, "the young lady in pink crape" is entirely forgotten.

Now, if the young widow should happen to feel at all "at home," and chooses to "come out" a little, mark what follows: "the young lady in pink crape" has to dance the remainder of the evening with red-haired, freckled, pock-marked, snub-nosed, flat-footed fellows, with whom she would not have touched gloves an hour ago, while all the stylish staff that then surrounded her, are doing homage at another shrine.

And no wonder!—A girl may be very agreeable and "all that," as people say when they want to cut description short; but it's impossible she can hold a candle to a young widow. She is obliged to be circumspect in all she says,—to weigh every word,—to cripple her conversation, lest she should be thought forward; but, worse than this, she is so deuced simple and credulous, that a man with a fine flowing tongue is apt to mislead her, and place himself in a false position before he gets through a set of quadrilles; whereas with the other partner it istout au contraire. "Old birds are not to be caught with chaff;" and old the youngest widow is, in "the ways of men," compared with the bread-and-butter portion of the unmarried world. You may rattle on as much as you please, so may she; you neither of you mean anything, and both of you know it: besides, no one has a right to forbid it; you are your own master, she herown mistress. Dance ten times in an evening with her, and call in the morning. What then!—she has her own house, her own servants. What more?—she is—able to take care of herself.

So much for a young widow in society, or those scenes of life in which the actors and actresses play more immediately against one another; scenes in which tragedy, comedy, melo-drama, and farce—the last predominating—are brought before us. Now, if we step behind the scenes, and look a little into the privacy of the domestic circle, and observe her as one of the "select few," we fancy we shall still find her maintaining her pre-eminence as an intelligent companion and delightful friend. When we use the term "intelligent," we do not presume to say that she is necessarily more acute than she was as a coy maiden, or than the virgin of our acquaintance, as touching any branch of historical, artistical, or scientific information; but we mean intelligent in an unobtrusive but every-day-available knowledge of "men and things,"—in other words, a knowledge of the world. She has pushed off from shore, and has learnt a little of the current of life, its eddies, shoals, and quicksands. She has lost the dangerous confidence of inexperience, without having acquired an uncharitable distrust; and smiles at the greenness of girlhood, without assuming the infallibility of age. She is not too old to have sympathy for youth, nor so young as to slight the experience of years. In her past, joy and sorrow have commingled; in her future, hope is chastened by reason.

Some imaginative people of bygone centuries decided that fire produced all things, and that this fire was inclosed in the earth. Of fire, Vesta was the goddess; or, as the Romans sometimes thought, Vesta herself was fire. Ovid is our authority for this:

"Nec tu aliud Vestam quàm vivam intellige flammam."

The same gentleman, also, synonymizes her with another element:

"—— Tellus Vestaque numen idem est."

Now, whether Vesta was fire, or fire Vesta, or whether the earth and Vesta were one and the same fire, we are not in a condition to determine; and as there are no muniments of any Insurance Office to throw light on the matter,—even the "Sun" had not then begun business in this line,—the curiosity of the curious must remain unquenched. This, however we know, that Vesta's waiting-women;—we beg their pardon, the goddess's lady's-maids,—the Vestales of her Temple, had, beyond the usual routine of their business, such as dressing and undressing her; waiting her whims, and getting up her linen, the onerous charge of watching and guarding the holy fire, and lighting it once a year, whether it required lighting or not. The first of March was the appointed day for this ceremony; though the first of April might have been, under all the circumstances, a more appropriate anniversary. We have no distinct records as to whether these young women were familiar with the application of flint and steel to tinder, or whether the royal-born Lucifer had, in those days, taken out a patent for his matches; there is little reason for regret, however, in this uncertainty, inasmuch as neither the one nor the other could have been made use of. The holy fire might be suppliedfrom no common flame, and they had therefore to ask "the favour of a light" from the pure and unpolluted rays of the Sun.

Now we humbly conceive that our motive for introducing this interesting little classical episode must be obvious from its conclusion.

We were talking of one—though certainly not in any probability a Vestal virgin—whose "sacred flame" had gone out, and we felt we should be expected to say something of its re-lighting. Thinking, preparatory to writing, we recollected all that wehavewritten, and we were interested and amused with the identity of means employed for a common end two thousand years ago and in the present day; as it then was, so it now is, managed byattraction.

It has just occurred to our reflective mind, that the imaginative people before-mentioned must have been figurative also; and meant by earth, human clay,—and by the fire therein, love. We should like to know what love willnotdo; and, until we are told, we shall deem it capable, as the ancients did fire, of producing everything.

And now a few words upon the marriage of a young widow. We might be expected to discuss the question of second marriages generally, and weigh the arguments pro and con,—the romance against the reality of life; but we decline doing so at present, on the ground that, right or wrong, young widows at any rate have ever had, if possible, and even will have, a second string to their bow, should grim Death rudely snap the first,—a second arrow to their quiver, should the first be lost "beyond recovery."

She marries again,—may we say, loves? If she has loved before, we may not.Heis in the grave, and her "heart is in the coffin there." But she marries; and, though she may exclaim,

"No more—no more,—oh! never more on meThe freshness of the heart can fall like dew,"

"No more—no more,—oh! never more on me

The freshness of the heart can fall like dew,"

in the spirit of the words,—she takes nothing from their truth by substituting one reading for another:

"No more—no more,—oh! never more on meThegreennessof the heart," &c.

"No more—no more,—oh! never more on me

Thegreennessof the heart," &c.

And this, there is no doubt, she does, as she embarks in matrimony with comfortable confidence a second time.

It is believed that many very sensible men have married young widows. Without saying whether we believe it, we may observe thatwehave never done anything of the kind, and never intend. This declaration is not inconsistent with perfect sincerity in all we have said. We have been treating of young widowsaswidows, not as wives. Our objections to any transformation on our own account are many; we shall give only one,—our extreme diffidence and modesty, which would never allow us to be judged by comparison as to the essentials of a good husband. So strong, indeed, is our feeling on this point, that, notwithstanding our extreme prepossession in their favour, we verily believe that the most fascinating relict that ever lived, with the best fortune that was ever funded, might say to us by her manner, as plainly as a brass-plate on a street-door, "Please to ring the bell-e," only to suffer defeat and disappointment.

And now we approach the second division, and proceed to pay ourrespects to middle-aged widows; generally, stout, healthy-looking women with seven children. We have omitted, by-the-bye, to observe, that young widows cannot have more than two, or at the most three, without losing caste. Seven children form a very interesting family, and confer considerable importance on their proprietor, of whose melancholy bereavement they are perpetual advertisements. In proportion to the number of pledges presented to a husband, is a wife's love for him; or, if this be not invariable, at any rate in proportion to her little ones is her sorrow for his loss; particularly when he dies leaving nothing behind him but the "regret of a large circle of friends." For some time, the afflicted woman places great reliance on an extensive sympathy, and has very little doubt that some one will some day do something: godfathers and godmothers rise into importance, and directors of the Blue-coat School are at a premium. If she be fortunate, her motherly pride is gratified before long by gazing on her first-born with a trimmed head and yellow cotton stockings; and by this time she generally finds out she has nothing more to expect from any one but—herself.

We have begun with the poor and heavily-burthened middle-aged widows, because they are by far the most numerous of the class. It is a singular thing, that we seldom meet with a middle-aged widow with a small family, or a large provision. The young and the old are frequently wealthy; not so the other unfortunates. We suppose the reason of this is, that the harassing cares of an increasing family kill off a prodigious number of men; and, inasmuch as these cares would not have existed had Fortune been propitious, they make their exit in poverty.

Occasionally, however, we meet with a middle-aged widow without children, and with fortune, or a comfortable independence. Of such a one we shall say a word or two. Generally speaking, she looks with extreme resignation on the affliction that has overtaken her; and, when she speaks of it, does so in the most Christian spirit. Of all widows, she is the most sure that "everything is for the best;" and, as she has no living duplicates of the lost original, her bosom is less frequently rent by recollections of the past. Anxious, however, to prove her appreciation of the holy state, and offer the best testimony of her sense of one good husband, she rarely omits taking a second; and, purely to diminish the chance of having twice in her life to mourn the loss of her heart's idol, she generally selects one some ten or fifteen years younger than herself. We say "selects," because it is very well known, that, though maids are wooed, widows are not. The first time a woman marries is very frequently to please another; the second time, invariably herself: she therefore takes the whole management of the matter into her own hands. We think that this is quite as it should be: it stands to reason that a woman of seven or eight and thirty, who has been married, should know a great deal more about married life than a young gentleman of twenty-five, who has not. And then he gets a nice motherly woman to take care of him, and keep him out of mischief, and has the interest of her money to forward him in his profession or business,—the principal has been too carefully settled on the lady to be in any risk.

We do occasionally encounter some "rara avis in terris"—a middle-aged widow who thinks nothing of further matrimony; and so convincedare we of the "dangerous tendency" of such characters, that we would at once consign them to perpetual imprisonment. If they declared their resolution in time, we would undoubtedly try it, by burying them with their first lover, or burning them Hindoo fashion; for, supposing them to have no children, to what possible good end can they propose to live? It is our firm belief that they know too much to be at perfect liberty, with safety to society; and they must of necessity be so thoroughly idle, beyond knitting purses and reading novels, as to make mischief the end and aim of their existence. We ask fearlessly of our readers this question—"Did you ever in your lives know an unmarrying, middle-aged, childless widow, who was not a disagreeable, slanderous, and strife-inducing creature?" If you ever did, you ought to have tickled her to death,—so as to have avoided disfigurement,—and sent her in a glass-case to the British Museum.

Perhaps it will be said by some, that they have known such a woman as we have just enquired about, and that they don't think she merited any such fate; perhaps they will say that she was a very harmless, pleasant person, and only remained single because she held her heart sacred to her departed lord. Cross-grained and ugly middle-aged widows may occasionally foster this romance; as also may those whose husbands have exemplified by their wills that jealousy may outlive life, by decreeing that their flower should lose its sweetness upon another presuming to wear it,—in other words, that, upon a second marriage, the worldly advantages of the first should determine.

There is a class of men in the world, who go through two-thirds of their life single, and who, if you were to believe them, never entertain the remotest notion of being "bothered with a wife." In some instances this arises from an early indulgence in dissipation; and, from keeping very equivocal company. In their own opinion they are extremely knowing, and are continually wondering "how men can make such asses of themselves" as to put their necks into the matrimonial noose; if you attempt to argue with them on the stupidity, if not baseness of their creed, they assure you confidently that "women are all alike." We once made a fellow of this sort ashamed of himself, when, having ended a long tirade, which was a coarse amplification of Pope's line,

"But every woman is at heart a rake,"

we asked him, with sufficient emphasis, "Who his mother and sisters werelivingwith?"

Another portion of the ring-renouncers are men who are so abominably selfish, that they would not share an atom of their worldly substance with the most perfect specimen of "the precious porcelain of human clay" that the world could produce them;—men who look with horror on the expenses of an establishment, and live in miserable hugger-muggery on some first-floor, sponging on their friends to the extremity of meanness;—men who look upon children with as much horror as that with which they would view a fall in the funds or the stoppage of their banker, and see nothing in them but a draft upon their pockets.

There is yet another body of solitaries, much smaller in numberthough, than either of the other two;—men who underrate themselves, and who are so extremely diffident and bashful as never to have "popped the question," though their tongues have often had the itch to do it;—men who people their room, as they sit over the fire, with an amiable woman and half-a-dozen little ones, and, when they rub their eyes into the reality of their nothingness, sigh for the happiness of some envied friend. It was necessary that we should make this digression.

We left the middle-aged widow with a large family and small means, convinced that, having got one child provided for,—enabling every one to speak of a kind act as though they had something to do with it,—she had then only to rely upon herself. Shedoesrely upon herself; and, in nine hundred and ninety-nine cases out of a thousand, her own resources are sufficient to change her state. Men may make fools of girls, but women make fools of men. In this work of retribution, middle-aged widows with families pre-eminently take the lead. They work particularly on those gentlemen whom we have here introduced; and more particularly and successfully on the first and third class, though the second are not unfrequently made examples of. It will be said that the first class are fools to hand: so they are; and, when caught, they find it out themselves. They are flies, buzzing about and blowing every fair fame they are not scared from. The widow spreads her web of flattery and flirtation; and when the poor insect ventures boldly in, confident that he can at any moment "take wing and away," she rolls him round and round in her meshes, as a spider does a blue-bottle,—or, to use a very expressive idiom, she "twists him round her finger," ring-shape. The consequential, slanderous, and boasting booby sinks into the insignificance of a caged monkey, and lives and dies a miserable Jerry Sneak! Look into society, and you will find many of them.

We admit it is a hard fate for a man, whose only failing, perhaps, has been his modesty, to be secured for the purpose of feeding the hungry and clothing the naked; but then it must be remembered that, had not a widow proposed to him, he would never have had courage to propose to anybody, and that he gets a companion for life and a ready-made family, instead of lingering on in envy and despair.

Seeing that we have called all widows old, who are on the grave side of forty, we feel that we have the most difficult portion of our subject to discuss,—difficult, and, we may add, delicate, because so very few of those who are obnoxious to what we may say, will be inclined to admit it; indeed, if we had any hope of getting over this difficulty by throwing in ten or fifteen years more, we would do so, and date only from fifty or fifty-five. We know, however, that this would not extricate us, and so prefer adhering to our original scale. Widows of forty and upwards command very little of the sympathy that waits on those bereaved in earlier life. The reason of this, perhaps, is, that they are not themselves so interesting. It is astonishing how much we feel through our eyes. We are told that "Pity is akin to love," and we might enter into some curious speculations as to the various deductions to be drawn from these words. Supposing we see a young creature of one-and-twenty, in all the freshness of life and first grief, who has buried a lover in a husbandafter two or three years of unalloyed happiness; she has an infant, perhaps, in each arm. Do we pity her? Deeply,—acutely; we could almost weep for her. Well; we meet a woman in the autumn of life, whose summer has been passed with the first and only object of her affections; hearts that yearned towards each other in youth, time has made one; in every inclination, wish, hope, fear, they have heightened the pleasures of life by a mutual enjoyment of them, and alleviated its sorrows by sharing them together. Death has divorced them, and we see her—alone! We are very sorry for her, and her four or five children; it is "a sad loss:"—we say so, and of course we mean it; but are we as sensitive to this picture as to that?

If we make second marriages a principal feature in this dissertation on widows, we do so because it is their "being's end and aim," as is incontrovertibly proved by their all but universality. Old widows, even if poor, sometimes lend an able hand in the retaliation of which we have before spoken; but, unfortunately, they also very frequently, when they happen to have wealth, become themselves objects of scorn and derision. Perhaps the most offensive creature in existence, and, save one, the most contemptible, is the worn-out, toothless, hairless, wrinkled jade, who attempts,

"—— Unholy mimickry of Nature's work!To recreate, with frail and mortal things,Her withered face;"

"—— Unholy mimickry of Nature's work!

To recreate, with frail and mortal things,

Her withered face;"

and then, upon the strength of a long purse, puts herself up, a decayed vessel, to Dutch auction, herself proclaiming what she is worth, to be knocked down—we are almost unmanly enough to wish it were not figuratively—to some needy young spendthrift, of whose grandmother she must have been a juvenile contemporary. Widows of this stamp are almost always women raised from low stations, from whom, perhaps, little delicacy or refinement is to be expected. There is hardly a season in which some carcase-butcher's or grocer's wealthy relict is not the talk, and wonder, and emetic of the town.

We must not conclude with exceptions, however, where they create so unfavourable an impression; we will rather turn to those portly and obliging widows who, after looking a little about them as single women, fall in with some comfortable old gentleman who very much wants a housekeeper, and somebody to mix his grog o' nights, and at once agree to take the situation. The old boy puts all his affairs into her hands, and they rub on together cosily enough the remainder of their days. Every one admits it to be "a very suitable match;" if an objection be made by anybody, it merely comes from some expectant nephews or nieces.

Therearewidows we think, we must admit it, who, widows once, remain so for ever, and from inclination, or rather from disinclination to encourage any impression, or even thought, that might weaken or interfere with the memory of the past; but we must repeat that they are never young, and rarely middle-aged widows: they are women past the meridian of their days, whose griefs, not violent or obtrusive, have yet been solemn and absorbing; women who have lost the vanity of believing they can accommodate themselves to any man; and, dwelling on the happiness theyhaveenjoyed, cherish its recollection as an act of devotion to one "not dead, but gone before."They wear their "weeds" as long as they are of this world; and there is always a quietness, if not gravity of demeanour, that perfectly assorts with them. In society they are always respected; by those who know them, loved; they do not hesitate to talk of their married life, and live over many of its scenes, to those who are interested in listening: herein they differ from married widows, if we may use the expression, who very rarely talk of their first union to any one but their husbands; they, perhaps, hear of it something too much, and too often!

And now, having passed our compliments and paid our respects, we must take our leave. We have been guilty of one rudeness,—we have had all the talk to ourselves: in return, we promise to be patient listeners, should any fair controversialist think fit to propound her views on this "highly-interesting and important subject."

PETRARCH IN LONDON.I.Near Battersea a lonely flower grew,It was in truth a sweet and lovely thing:The skies smiled on its blossoming,And poured into its breast their balmy dew;Its breath was fragrant as the month of May;Its face was fairer than the mist that veilsAurora's self, ere she has bid the dayLaugh on the hills, and smile upon the dales.Fairest of all!—companions she had none;For Fate had torn them from her tender side.She seemed a virgin suing to be won,And yet all-shrinking in her modest pride.This cauliflower,—which I now call a flower,—I took into my arms, and boiled that very hour.II.The Irish hodman, on his ladder high,Surveys each chimney-pot that smokes around,Then turns his anxious eyes upon the groundTo where his pipe doth in his jacket lie:Sweet thoughts of "'bacco," and the opium feelThat lays a handcuff on Care's iron wrist.Come o'er his mind; and pots of porter steal,Illusive settling on his outstretched fist!Entranced he stands: the tenants of his hodFall down before the spirits of his heart;Till Reason interferes her magic rod,"Puts out his pipe," and shows his bricks apart,So 'twas with me: Ambition once did fixAn airy structure, which fell down "like bricks!"

I.Near Battersea a lonely flower grew,It was in truth a sweet and lovely thing:The skies smiled on its blossoming,And poured into its breast their balmy dew;Its breath was fragrant as the month of May;Its face was fairer than the mist that veilsAurora's self, ere she has bid the dayLaugh on the hills, and smile upon the dales.Fairest of all!—companions she had none;For Fate had torn them from her tender side.She seemed a virgin suing to be won,And yet all-shrinking in her modest pride.This cauliflower,—which I now call a flower,—I took into my arms, and boiled that very hour.II.The Irish hodman, on his ladder high,Surveys each chimney-pot that smokes around,Then turns his anxious eyes upon the groundTo where his pipe doth in his jacket lie:Sweet thoughts of "'bacco," and the opium feelThat lays a handcuff on Care's iron wrist.Come o'er his mind; and pots of porter steal,Illusive settling on his outstretched fist!Entranced he stands: the tenants of his hodFall down before the spirits of his heart;Till Reason interferes her magic rod,"Puts out his pipe," and shows his bricks apart,So 'twas with me: Ambition once did fixAn airy structure, which fell down "like bricks!"

Near Battersea a lonely flower grew,It was in truth a sweet and lovely thing:The skies smiled on its blossoming,And poured into its breast their balmy dew;Its breath was fragrant as the month of May;Its face was fairer than the mist that veilsAurora's self, ere she has bid the dayLaugh on the hills, and smile upon the dales.Fairest of all!—companions she had none;For Fate had torn them from her tender side.She seemed a virgin suing to be won,And yet all-shrinking in her modest pride.This cauliflower,—which I now call a flower,—I took into my arms, and boiled that very hour.

Near Battersea a lonely flower grew,

It was in truth a sweet and lovely thing:

The skies smiled on its blossoming,

And poured into its breast their balmy dew;

Its breath was fragrant as the month of May;

Its face was fairer than the mist that veils

Aurora's self, ere she has bid the day

Laugh on the hills, and smile upon the dales.

Fairest of all!—companions she had none;

For Fate had torn them from her tender side.

She seemed a virgin suing to be won,

And yet all-shrinking in her modest pride.

This cauliflower,—which I now call a flower,—

I took into my arms, and boiled that very hour.

II.

The Irish hodman, on his ladder high,Surveys each chimney-pot that smokes around,Then turns his anxious eyes upon the groundTo where his pipe doth in his jacket lie:Sweet thoughts of "'bacco," and the opium feelThat lays a handcuff on Care's iron wrist.Come o'er his mind; and pots of porter steal,Illusive settling on his outstretched fist!Entranced he stands: the tenants of his hodFall down before the spirits of his heart;Till Reason interferes her magic rod,"Puts out his pipe," and shows his bricks apart,So 'twas with me: Ambition once did fixAn airy structure, which fell down "like bricks!"

The Irish hodman, on his ladder high,

Surveys each chimney-pot that smokes around,

Then turns his anxious eyes upon the ground

To where his pipe doth in his jacket lie:

Sweet thoughts of "'bacco," and the opium feel

That lays a handcuff on Care's iron wrist.

Come o'er his mind; and pots of porter steal,

Illusive settling on his outstretched fist!

Entranced he stands: the tenants of his hod

Fall down before the spirits of his heart;

Till Reason interferes her magic rod,

"Puts out his pipe," and shows his bricks apart,

So 'twas with me: Ambition once did fix

An airy structure, which fell down "like bricks!"

ADVENTURES IN PARIS.BY TOBY ALLSPY.THE FIVE FLOORS.The Boulevards may be said to perform for Paris the functions fulfilled by the cestus of Venus towards that amphibious goddess, by surrounding it with a magic girdle of fascinations. Every sort and variety of entertainment is to be found comprised in their cincture of the city,—from the stately Académie de Musique and Italian Opera (full of dandies and dowagers), to the trestles of rope-dancers, amphitheatres of dancing-dogs, and galleries of wax-work, (full of ploughboys and pickpockets,)—and every species of domicile, from the gorgeous hôtel to the humble stalls of the vendors of liquorice-water andgalette. At one extremity we have the costlymenuof the Café de Paris, with itsortolansandpoudings à la Nessebrode; at the other, the greasyfricotsof La Courtille. The Café Turc brays forth with Tolbecque, and an orchestra of trumpets and bassoons; theguinguettesof the Faubourg St. Antoine scrape away with their solitary fiddle. Every species of shop and merchandize, from the sumptuousmagazinof Le Revenant to theboutique à vingt-cinq sous; every species of temple, from the Parthenonic Madeleine, to that aërial shrine of liberty, the site of the Bastille. Every gradation of display between splendour and misery is epitomized in the circuit of the Boulevards.Play, opera, farce, feats of equestrianism, funambulism, somnambulism, and humbugism of every colour, industrious fleas, and idle vendors of magic eye-salve, successively arrest the attention; while in the vicinity of the Café Tortoni, famous for the coldness of its ices and heat of its quarrels, thecourtier marronplies his trade of trickery; stock-jobbing has full possession of thepavé; and almost within hearing of the knowing ears of the Jockey-Club, and the ears polite of theClub Anglais, bulls and bears outbellow the fashionable jabber of the Boulevards.On emerging from the head-quarters of English Paris,—the Rue de la Paix,—to the Boulevards des Capucines and des Italiens, the eye is dazzled by gilding, gas-light, plate-glass, scagliola, or moulu, varnished counters, and panelling in grotesque and arabesque, interspersed with glittering mirrors, as appliances and means of getting off the lowest goods at the highest rate. A little further, and by an imperceptible gradation, vice succeeds to frivolity. Instead of milliners and jewellers, we find billiard-tables and gambling-houses, deepening at length, into the more tremendous hazards of the Stock Exchange. After passing the vicinity of the Bourse, we come, naturally enough, to the quarter of the Jews; passing through the speculative neighbourhood of Le Passage des Panoramas, which is but a splendid game of chance materialised into stone and marble.Next to this gaudy section of the modern Babylon dwells solid trade,—the streets of St. Denis and St. Martin,—accompanied by such theatres and such coffee-houses as might be expected to minister to the sensual and intellectual delights of themarchand en gros; melo-drama, and the Porte St. Martin,—theCadran Bleu, and its unctuouscuisine. The vicinage of Rag Fair (themarché aux vieuxlinges) succeeds; then the Boulevard still bearing the name of Beaumarchais (the mansion formerly inhabited by the creator of Figaro being appropriately occupied by a refinery of salt); and lastly, in the wake of rags and wits, the site of the Bastille,—the rallying-point of the most seditious parish of Paris, the republican quarter of the manufacturers, the tremendous Faubourg St. Antoine.It was precisely at the boundary limit between the pleasure and business sections of the Boulevards, at the corner of the Rue du Faubourg Montmartre, on an airy second-floor with a projecting balcony, commanding a view of the sporting world to the right, and the trading world to the left,—the idle west, and active east,—that there lived a certain Monsieur Georges,—a little wizened man, of doubtful age, doubtful fortune, doubtful reputation. Everything about him was equivocal. In Paris people occupy themselves far less than in London with the affairs of their neighbours: the great have something better to do, the little something worse; the rich being too busy with play, the poor too busy with work, to have leisure for the dirty scandals which spring up likefungiin that region of lords and lackeys, Grosvenor Square. Nevertheless, the porter's lodge of every Parisian house is a chartered temple of echo, having a gossipry and a jargon of its own. The porter's lodge knits stockings, reads novels, and composes romances; peeps into letters, interrogates chambermaids, and confederates with duns. A man loose in his habits had need be very close in his domestics, in order to escape the detection of his porter's lodge.Yet, in spite of fifteen years' domiciliation in that polished corner of the Boulevards, Monsieur Georges, though far from a beauty, was still a mystery.Madame la portièrehad never been able to discover whether "Georges" was a surname given by father to son, or a Christian name given by godfather to godson. She sometimes thought him a single man, sometimes a double, nay, sometimes a treble. Curious varieties of the fair sex occasionally visited the balconied saloon,—young, old, and middle-aged,—shabby-genteels who passed for poor relations, and glaring tawdry who passed for worse. There was no roost in his abode, however, either for the birds with fine feathers, or the birds without. Monsieur Georges's foible was not that of hospitality. His interests were too intimately cared for by a ferociousfemme de confiance, who set himself and his house in order, and caused his establishment to be designated in the neighbourhood as that of Georges and the Dragon.If not generous, however, the little man was strictly just; he gave nothing, but he kept nothing back. He paid his way with the praiseworthy punctuality remarkable in those who never pay an inch of the way for other people.It is a hard thing, by-the-bye, that while male designations leave the facts of the man's bachelorhood uncertain, a spinster is specially pointed out by the malice of conventional phraseology. Mr. or Monsieur may be married or single, as he pleases; but Mrs. and Madame assume, even on the direction of a letter, their airs of matronly superiority over Miss or Mademoiselle. While her master rejoiced in his ambiguity asMonsieurGeorges,MademoiselleBerthe was designated to mankind and womankind in all the odium of spinsterhood; and exclamations of "old maid" and "chissie" followed herdaily passage past the porter's lodge, the moment the "grim white woman" reached the first floor.Among those who indulged in the acrimonious apostrophe, the most persevering, if not the loudest, was an urchin of some fourteen years old, whom Monsieur Georges had added to his establishment two years before, by way of Jack Nasty, foot-page, or errand-boy, under an engagement to clean Monsieur Georges and the housekeeper's shoes, without dirtying the ante-room with his own; to work much, eat little, sleep less; to keep his ears open, and his mouth shut; his hands full, and his stomach empty; his legs were to be evermore running, his tongue never. Now, little Auguste, (Auguste in the parlour, and Guguste in the porter's lodge,) though reared in a provincial foundling hospital, where infants are fed, like sheep, on a common, by the score, and washed, like pocket-handkerchiefs, by the dozen, had unluckily both a will and an appetite of his own. Cleaning Mademoiselle Berthe's shoes inspired him with a fancy for standing in them; and, on more than one occasion, he was found to have encroached upon the housekeeper's breakfast of coffee and cream, instead of contenting himself with wholesome filtred water. He was forthwith accused of being a greedy pig, as well as of making a litter in the apartments; till, after six months of faultiness and fault-finding, Monsieur Georges pronounced him to be an incorrigiblegamin, sentenced him to "bring firing at requiring," and blacken shoes as usual, but to have his bed in an attic under the roof, (Parisianly called, after the famous Parisian architect, amansarde,) and his board in the porter's lodge, where the board was exceedingly hard; Madame Grégoire,—the knitter of stockings, reader of novels, and coiner of romances for the corner-house of the Rue Montmartre,—having consented to feed and cherish him at the rate of twenty-five francs per month,id est, five weekly shillings lawful coin of her Majesty's realm. Monsieur Georges perhaps intended to starve the saucy gamin into submission; hedidalmost succeed in starving him into an atrophy.Guguste, however, was a lad of spirit, and could hunger cheerfully under the housekeeping of the kind-hearted Madame Grégoire, who made up for the scantiness of her cheer by the abundance of her cheerfulness, buttered her parsnips with fine words, and gave the poor half-clothedgaminthe place nearest thechauffrette, (fire she had none,) while Mademoiselle Berthe made the apartment on the second floor too hot to hold him. Madame Grégoire,—whose only daughter was the wife of a puppet-showman, and whose only grandson, a seller of sparrowsrouged et noiredinto bullfinches, or white-washed into canaries, on the Pont Neuf,—transferred a considerable portion of her unclaimed dividends of maternal tenderness to the little orphan. Her son was a soldier, serving (as she said) at Algiers in the Indies, and by no means likely to enter into rivalship with the slave of Monsieur Georges and Mademoiselle Berthe's household."'Tis a strange thing, my dear child," mumbled the old woman to Guguste, as they sat down together one day to their six o'clock soup, (a composition of hot water, cabbage-stalks, half an ounce of bacon, and a peck of salt,) "that so long as I have held the string[29]in this house, not a drop of wine, either in piece or bottle, has ever gone through the gateway to the address of Monsieur Georges! Every month comes the supply of chocolate from Marquise's for Monsieur, and from the Golden Bee a cargo of Bourbon coffee and beetroot sugar for the housekeeper; but of wine not a pint.""Neither Georges nor the Dragon are honest souls enough to trust themselves with their cups," said the knowinggamin. "Wine tells truth, they say. None but an ass talks now-a-days of truth lying at the bottom of a well;—'tis in the bottom of a hogshead of claret. Ma'mselle Berthe, who can do nothing but lie, is the liar in the well.Shecan't keep her head above water.""But Monsieur Georges, who need entertain no fear of making too free with his own secrets after a glass or two, inasmuch as no living mortal ever dips with him in the dish;—surely Monsieur might indulge on Sundays, and fête days, and the like?""And so he does indulge, Maman Grégoire,—so he does! Some folks like their champagne, some their burgundy. Master loves to take an internal hot-bath after the English fashion.""A tea-drinker?sacristie!what effeminacy!" exclaimed the old woman, bravely swallowing, out of a spoon ofmétal d'Alger, a large mouthful of tepid cabbage water. "I recollect seeing tea made upon the stage, in the farce of 'Madame Pochet et Madame Gibou.'Jésu!what nastiness! I really wonder at Monsieur Georges! So spruce and so cleanly a gentleman as he looks, when, every evening just as St. Philip's church chimes the half-hour after seven, 'Le cordon, s'il vous plait,' gives me notice of his exit! His superfine blue coat and garnet-coloured velvet waistcoat without a speck of dust upon them!""Thanks tome!" interposed Guguste."Histoupetshining withhuile antique.""Thanks tome!" continued Guguste."His boots varnished like looking-glasses.""Thanks tome!" pursued Guguste."His hat smoothed as with an iron.""Thanks tome,—thanks tome!""Hisjabotplaited as if by machinery, and white as snow; while his great diamond studs look out like eyes of fire from the frilling,—""Thank to—no, not thanks tome!" cried Guguste. "I must own that Ma'mselle Berthe, who is so much in the starch line, still presides in the washing and ironing department; and, as to the brilliants, which you say shine in the dark like cats' eyes, master keeps them like the apple of his own.""I wonder what makes him so wonderful particular about his dress after nightfall?" said Madame Grégoire, peering through her spectacles into the face which she was preparing to cross-examine. "Humph?""Can't say," replied Guguste, tilting the soup-tureen to transfer the last drop of warm salt-water to his own plate."You meanwon't; youcouldfast enough if you would, child!" said Madame Grégoire pettishly."Bah!" cried thegamin, (who was perhaps of opinion that the kicks, which, more than half-pence, constituted his salary in Monsieur Georges's service, formed a tie upon his discretions,)—"howcanyou, Ma'me Grégoire, who are such a very sensible woman, imagine it possible, that while I am clearing away the dinner things down stairs in the porter's lodge, or up stairs in Ma'mselle Berthe's chamber, I can have an eye to master's proceedings after he has crossed his threshold! Maybe he goes to the opera.""Three nights in the week. But the other four?""There are fifteen theatres open, as I've heard tell, in the city and the suburbs," quoth Guguste drily."But, gentlemen asisgentlemen (which is what Monsieur Georges calls himself, however he may be called by others,) don't put on diamond studs and embroidered waistcoats, to go to the playhouses!""Don't they? How should I know?" demanded Guguste, polishing the pewter spoon on his sleeve as he was accustomed to do those of his master's double-threaded silver. "What do I see of playhouses?""Why, you ungrateful child! didn't I give you a ticket for the pit of the Porte St. Martin, for that moving piece, 'The Spectre Abbot,' on the night of Ma'mselle Isoline's benefit, the deputy-double of the general-utilityjeune prémière, who lodges up stairs in the back attic, next but one to your own?""Yes; I saw 'The Spectre Abbot,' and Ma'mselle Isoline into the bargain, with three-quarters of a yard of red calico hanging to her waist, to represent the 'Bleeding Nun;' but I didn't take any notice whether the gentleman whose elbows were jammed into my sides wore diamond studs or velvet waistcoats.""At all events you must perceive that the highly-respectable gentleman who occupies our splendid first-floor apartment, (Monsieur Boncoeur, the deputy,) goes out every evening in his carriage in a very different costume?""Monsieur Boncoeur, in his carriage, need not hoist a flag of gentility. Monsieur Georges, on foot, might be hustled off the pavement but for his brilliants.""More likelyforthem," said the porteress."Besides, Monsieur Boncoeur is, as you say, such a very respectable-looking gentleman! His dark, square-cut coat, and pepper-and-salts; his broad-brimmed hat, and sad-coloured gloves; his whole outward man seems to have been taken measure of as the picture of respectability! And see what that very respectability has brought him to! Partner in one of the first houses in the Rue Bergère; deputy in the chamber;marguillierof the parish; a ribbon in his button-hole; and the picture of himself and his ribbon face to face with the portrait of Louis Philippe, at the gallery of the Exposition, for all the world as if they'd a little word to say to each other in public. Lord bless you! Monsieur Boncoeur's respectable grey whiskers, respectable speckled stockings, respectable great-coat and umbrella, are worth a couple of hundred thousand francs a year to the banking-house in the Rue Bergère, as vouchers for the square-toeishness of the firm!""Lord love thee, child! at thy years how shouldst thou know so much of the world!" cried Madame Grégoire, removing her spectacles after this tirade, as if all further perspicacity were superfluous."By being thrown upon it from the moment I had years to count," cried the urchin. "A foundling hospital, Ma'me Grég. is a famouswhetstone, against which no one can rub without sharpening his wits!""But, since thine are so sharp, boy, how comes it thou hast never discovered whither Monsieur Georges directs his steps every evening, winter and summer, at half-past seven.""Because 'tis my business to know, and I prefer my pleasure. I've some sort ofright, you see, to interest myself in master's proceedings; but in those of Monsieur Boncoeur of the first floor, Ma'mselle Isoline of the attic, Madame la Baronne de Gimbecque, the pretty lady with the handsomecachemires,coupé, and black eyes, who lodges in theentrésol, and Madame Courson, the widow lady, on thetroisième, I've nothing but wrong; and, accordingly, not a step do they take with which I am not conversant. I could tell you, if you wanted to know, where Madame Courson's poor, little, pale, patient daughter, Demoiselle Claire——""Thank ye,—thank ye! I fancy I know more of my lodgers thanyoudo! All I ask you, is, concerning your master. Monsieur Georges is the only inmate of this house for whom it has ever been my fortune to pull the string without discovering, before the end of the first term, the source of his income, where he came from, whither he was going, and——""Good evening, grandmamma!" squeaked a voice at the moveable pane of the glass-door,—the arrow-slit, ormeurtrière, through which every porteress is privileged to parley with visitors at meal-times or in windy weather."'Tis Dodo!" exclaimed Guguste, rising to open the latch for the lean and impish-looking grandson of Madame Grégoire, whose wistful glances in eyeing the empty tureen plainly indicated that his visit had been miscalculated by a quarter of an hour."Mother desired me to call and inquire after the rheumatic pain in your right shoulder," continued Dodo, (the short for Dodore,—which is short for Theodore, in cockney Parisian.)"'Twas in my left, and it has left me," said the old woman peevishly; "and don't sit on that chair, child. The knitting-needles in the stocking may do you a mischief. How's your mother?""Mamma's got a cold, sitting out in the showers yesterday afternoon, to finish shaving a poodle which a customer was werry particular to get done in time to go out to dinner.""Humph! I fancied, Dodo,youhad taken that part of the business off her hands. I thought she made over the scissors to you at Michaelmas last?""And so she did for anything of plain work," replied the brat; "but this was a choice customer, and a bit of fancy work; a great big greybarbet, which stands as high as a rocking-horse, whose master is curious in his shaving. The gentleman's a poet, what does the off-rightsromantiquefor Victor Hugo's plaything playhouse at the Porte St. Antoine; and, as the vulgars is apt to have their poodles lion-fashion, Monsieur Eugène gives hisn a mane and forelock; which, with cropped ears, looks for all the world like a unicorn!""What an ass!" cried Madame Grégoire contemptuously, tapping her snuff-box. "These poet and player folk makes themselves notorious, and fancies themselves famous!""And how goes on your own business, Dodo?" demanded Guguste, assuming in the presence of the starveling of nine years old the airs of a man of the world."Pretty smart, thank ye. I've just set up two new sparrow-traps in a ditch under the barrack-wall at Montrouge; and last week I sold a pair of as fine canaries as a coating of plaster of Paris and gamboge could make 'em, to a fine English lady in a carriage, as was crossing the bridge to the flower-market. Gave the brace of birds for nine francs, one of which I slipped into the hand of herlaquais de place. But then I was out of business, you see, for three days a'twards, for fear of the police.""Dodo, you'll be disgracing your family one of these days by being took up!" said Madame Grégoire impressively. "I remember my respectable first-floor, Monsieur Boncoeur, bringing home a piping bullfinch last year he'd bought on the Boulevards, whose red breast washed off the first showery day, all as one as Ma'mselle Isoline's rouge after a flood of tears in a melodrame! The poor dear gentleman had half a mind to have up the seller of the impositious bird before the commissary of the district; only, as he'd paid for it with an old coat unbeknownst to his valet, and an old coat not being lawful coin of the realm, there was a doubt in his mind about his power of bringing the vagabond to justice.""Which? Himself, or the impositious bird, or the industrious fowler as was arning a living for his family?" inquired Guguste."Hush!" cried Madame Grégoire, laying her hand on the cord as Monsieur Georges' thin voice was heard giving utterance to his usual evening cry of "Le cordon!" Guguste slunk behind her high-backed chair as his tyrant passed the window,—his withered, sallow face enlivened by his gold-mounted spectacles, and his mean person coquetted into consequence, perforce of velvet and trinkets. Burnished from top to toe, he was the very moral of one of Giroux's toys, the veryimmoral of achevalier d'industrie.Certain that his master's exit would be the signal for his being fetched out of that, by the shrill summons of Ma'mselle Berthe to set the place in order, and make up the fire, (against the arrival of her cousin, Madame Dosne, an ex-box-opener of the Ambigu Comique, who occupied a chamber in the story above, and was admitted to the honour of seeing her prim relative play patience, and of sipping a glass of sugar and water with her on a long winter's evening,) Guguste flitted upward to the discharge of his duties, leaving the skinny imp of the Pont Neuf and his grandam to commune of domestic matters. While waiting the summons of Monsieur Boncoeur's demure-looking footman to open the gate for the demure-looking chariot of that highly demure and respectable individual, Madame Grégoire accordingly interrogated the boy concerning his father's absence from the sweets of his domestic hearth."Papa is making a tour in the south," replied the imp. "He passed the summer in the Pyrenees. The Pyrenees are quite in fashion in papa's line of business!""Ay, 'tis well for him that Gothon likes him to lead such a rambling life!" said Madame Grégoire in a moralizing tone. "When my poor daughter thought proper to marry a showman, I told her how it would be! To think, now, of a child of mine, a respectableportièrein the same house, of the same parish, for forty years' standing.""The house?""Thehouse, ignoramus!—The house is a century old, built by the Regent Duke of Orleans, father of his unfortunate majesty, Louis XIV, as you might read in history,—if you knew how to read.—To think of a child of mine, I say, squatting on a wooden stool, like a wild Indian, winter and summer, with nothing but a cold river under her feet, and cold oil-cloth over her head, on the look-out for a poodle in want of clipping, or some mouse-eaten-out-of-house-and-home baker in want of a tabby kitten! I protest I never think of my poor Gothon and her stock-in-trade,—her cage of cats on one side, and her string of puppies on the other,—without bitter anguish of soul. Why can't your father stay at home, Dodore, and set up in the Champs Elysées, or at thebarrières, like other respectable men of his profession, to be nearer home?""Bless your heart!" remonstrated Dodo, "papa took up his station three years ago, on the way along the Allée d'Antin, to the Suspension Bridge. But it all but made a bankrupt of him! There was too much competition. Pierre the Savoyard, who had his show-box within fifty yards, has such a winning way with him that not a nurse-maid, or English lord coming out of Lepage's shooting-gallery, but used to throw silver to Pierre, where papa took only the brownest of copper. At last, a nasty, good-for-nothing, designing Jesuit of a fellow set up in opposition to both on 'em; Scripture pieces, with Jepfa's daughters, and Dalily and Goliar, a hand-organ, and Dutch pug as held an old hat, and what not. Papa bore it as long as he was able; but what was the good of opposition atween friends? He'd nothing in his box but worn-out things, as old as Methusalem or Jerusalem, or whatever it is, such as the battle of Marengo, and the Pyramids, and the landing of Xerxes in the Hellyspunt and a pack of low-lived fancies. So mamma persuaded him to try the provinces (where, as all the world knows, the stalest bread goes down); and so, from fair to fair, he's been touring it this twelvemonth.""Poor Gothon!""Mamma doesn't fret. She says I shall soon be old enough to take papa's business off his shoulders, and then he'll be able to retire comfortable; and she'll give up her stall on the Pont Neuf, and the kitten and canary line, to sister Mary."Madame Grégoire was about to remonstrate against this perpetuation of open-air commerce in her posterity, when Monsieur Boncoeur's signal was given; and, lo, the well-varnished, well-stuffed, but plain chariot of the thriving banker, rolled after his fat and bean-fed horses out of the court-yard.Some minutes afterwards, his portlyfemme de ménage, Madame Alexandre, stepped into the lodge for a few minutes' gossip with the porteress previous to proceeding to her evening'sBostonwith the grocer's lady at the opposite corner. The comely housekeeper, in her silk-cloak and bonnet, was naturally an object of dislike and envy to the witheredportière, in her ragged merino gown and dingy calico cap. But Christmas was approaching. Herétrennesfor New Year's Day (to the sum total of which, the first-floor contributed three-fourths)were seldom absent from Madame Grégoire's calculations. Besides, Monsieur Boncoeur's housekeeper was to be conciliated as a connecting link in her chain of domestic investigation; for Madame Alexandre not only afforded her quota of information concerning her own and her master's affairs, but, in pure pryingness of spirit, contrived to see through stone-walls, and hear down chimneys, while striving to put this and that together concerning those of her fellow-lodgers."Well, Madame Grégoire, what is the best news with us this evening?" demanded the jolly dame, as soon as the porteress had despatched her hungry grandson home to his mamma, the kittens and canaries. "I'm just stepping out, you see, for my little game with the Pruins. Poor people, they can't do without me! If I warn't with them before the clock struck eight, I should be having them here after me; and, to be filling the house with visitors during master's absence, is a thing I'm not in the habit of doing, as nobody knows, better than yourself. Indeed, it's a matter of conscience that takes me out the moment his back is turned. As afemme de confiance, I'm bound to see there's no waste; and where there's visitors theremustbe tippling and stuffing; so, out of regard to Monsieur Boncoeur's property, I'm seldom in the house ten minutes after him. I hope I know my duty by so respectable a master better than to make away with his goods like Ma'mselle Berthe up yonder, who keeps open house like a lady, with as many rings at her bells of an evening as e'er a duchess in the land! But, as I was saying, Madame Grégoire,—(Dearie me, I thought I wasn't by no means comfortable! I've been sitting on the knitting-needles! lucky my cloak was wadded!)—as I was saying, have you made out anything further about them Coursons?""Scarce a syllable more than the first day they took possession! One knowed they was respectable, 'cause our proprietor is exceeding particular about references,—(there isn't a partic'larer landlord from one end of the Boulevards to t'other!)—and one knowed they waspoor, 'cause their moveables came on a porter's truck, instead of occupying a cart and horse, as becomes a creditable lodger, or instead of occupying three vans of theadministration des déménagemens, as was the case, I remember, when our respectable first-floor moved in."Madame Alexandre smiled a neat and appropriate smile of acknowledgment for her master; while the porteress took breath, a pinch of snuff, and proceeded."But as to their origin, and sitch, I know no more than Adam! Not an acquaintance in the parish! I even put the water-carrier upon asking about the neighbourhood; but no such name as Courson was ever heard of! How do we know, pray, who we've got among us? Courson may be a sham name, such as we reads of in Monsieur Jules Janin's novels!""Such rubbish, indeed!" said Madame Alexandre, with a sneer, intended, like the epithet, to apply to the lodgers on the third-floor, ignored by the water-carrier and public-houses in the neighbourhood,notto Monsieur Janin's novels, which were probably familiar to them all."Would you believe it, ma'am? there's the saucy minx of adaughter (Ma'mselle Claire, I think, you told me was her name,) has the owdacity to bid me good morning or good evening if I haps to meet her on the stairs, affable-like, as if she felt me her inferiorer! Me! Now I don't know, Ma'me Grégoire, what your opinion may be, butIholds (and so does my friends, the Pruins,) that the upper domestics of the first-floor is on a 'quality with the lodgers of the third, that keeps no domestics at all.""Certainly, ma'am, certainly," replied the porteress, still harping on the amount of her New Year's gift. "But have you made out nothing of these people's occupations? You're two floors nigher to 'em than me. If I was inyourplace——""If you was in that of the housekeeper of Monsieur Georges, you mean! Ma'mselle Berthe's store-closet looks clean into Ma'mselle Claire's room.""Looks dirty in," emended the prying porteress."And, if Ma'mselle Berthe wasn't as dry as a handful of deal shavings, maybe I might have demeaned myself to ask her in a friendly way how the young lady passed her mornings. But Ma'mselle Berthe (thechissie!) condescends to hold just about as much communication with me as one of the chayney mandarins on the top of master's cabinet,—shakes her head by way of salutation, and not a word!""But, Guguste (Monsieur Georges's little lad of all work and no play) assured me he saw Ma'mselle Courson ring at Monsieur Boncoeur's bell the other day, and deliver a letter to the footman.""Oho! that dirty littlegaminplays the spy upon those who rings at Monsieur Boncoeur's bell, do he?" cried the housekeeper, reddening. "Very dirty behaviour, I must confess!""But, my dear madam, my dear friend," whined the porteress in a tone of deprecation, "did not you yourself inform me that Monsieur Boncoeur's footman carried up on Sunday se'nnight, by Monsieur Boncoeur's desire, to Ma'mselle Claire, a box of apricot marmalade, and the last number of the 'Follet'?""I said no such thing, ma'am, as I remember. The marmalade and the journal was both lawfully directed to Madame Courson. I never so much as insinnivated a word of an intention of attention to Mademoiselle!""Then I miscomprehended, ma'am; in which I'm the more to blame, because, from the highly-respectable character of the mansion for which I have the honour to pull the string, (there isn't, as I said before, a more partic'larer landlord than the proprietor from one end of the Boulevarts to t'other,) I might have known that even the letters of a gentleman so distinguished as my first-floor would never have been received by Ma'mselle, the daughter of Madame Courson.""That's all you know about it,—is it?" cried the lusty housekeeper, crimsoning with pique. "Then be so good as to tell me what makes such a young lady as Ma'mselle, Madame Courson's daughter, write written letters to so distinguished a gentleman as your first-floor? Answer me that!""She couldn't be guilty of anything so heinous!" cried the porteress, aghast."I tell you shewas!""Youmustbe mistaken!""Seeing is believing, Madame Grégoire!""Ay! you may have seen herdelivera written letter, poor dear, from her mamma, in all probability?""No such thing!—from herself.""Now, how can you possibly know! Did you see her write it? Do you even know her handwriting?""I know her signature,—'Claire de Courson;' and you told me your werry self, that the agreement for the lodgings was signed by her mother as 'Emilie de Courson.'""But the signature was inside the written letter. How could you seethat?""No matter; I did see it with my two eyes as plain as I see you.""And that's plain enough," muttered Guguste, who, having crept back unobserved into the room, was skulking in a corner."Why, sure you didn't go to peep?" said the porteress, with a knowing look of inquiry and accusation."What a one you are!" cried Madame Alexandre, trying to turn off jocularly her self-betrayal. "But, not to haggle with partic'lars of how the letter came into my hands, into my hands it came; and what should it be, but a private confidentialtête-à-têteepistle from the young lady, saying how Monsieur Boncoeur's reputation for benevolence was up in the neighbourhood, and how he seemed inclined to befriend her poor mother, (the apricot marmalade, you know!) and how it would be a great charity (no, not charity,—act of humanity the shabby-genteels calls it,) if he would exert his interest to procure for her mamma a privilege to sell stamps, abureau de papier timbré; for which, of course, his petitioner was ever bound to pray, and so forth.""I hope they don't think of setting up anything in the shop or office line in a house like ourn?" cried Madame Grégoire, with dignity. "They'll find theirself plaguily out of their reckoning!—for I must say it, who shouldn't say it, that there isn't a more partic'larer landlord.""I'll just tell you what," ruthlessly interrupted Madame Alexandre, twitching her silk cloak, as if meditating departure. "Tonight's Monday, you know.""Yes, Idoknow.""And that's the reception-night, you know, of the Minister of the Home Department.""No, I didn't know.""And, as sure as life,——""Lord lovee, Ma'me Alexandre, don't use that profane expression! There's nothing less sure than life!" cried Madame G. while Auguste groaned in the background."As sure as a gun, then——"Again Auguste groaned."—Master's gone this evening to the hotel of theMinistre de l'Interieur, to present Ma'mselle Claire's petition for a stamp-office.""Do you really think things of that sort are done in that sort of straight-for'ard way?" demanded the porteress. "Ifancied that, when you wanted anything of government, you got a word said for you to the cousin of some clerk-of-a-deputy-to-an-under-commissioner,with, maybe, a genteel little offering, to make it go down,—such as a Savoy cake, or a China rose-tree in a flower-pot.""Nonsense! You're thinking of folks of your own species," said the housekeeper disdainfully."You forget that my master, Monsieur Boncoeur,'s a representative of the nation, a governor of the Bank of France, and amarguillierof the parish. Master's a right to go straight an end to the king, and tell his majesty any little wish he may have ungratified. And, if heshouldthink proper to mention to Louis Philippe Ma'mselle Claire's desire that her mamma should set up a bureau for stamps, her business is done!"They were interrupted by the starting up of Guguste, who was crouching behind them, and placed an admonitory finger on his lip to impose silence upon Madame Grégoire's meditated rejoinder, just as a very white hand, holding a very black key, was intruded into the room through the porter's window; and the silvery accents of Mademoiselle Courson were heard, announcing to the porteress that she was going out for half an hour; and that, though her mother remained at home, she was indisposed, and could receive no visitors.""Visitors, indeed! Who ever comes to visitthem, I should like to know!" muttered Madame Grégoire, after pulling thecordonto admit of the young lady's egress."She certainlyhada bundle under her arm!" cried Madame Alexandre, who had been watching the young lady through the window. "Now, how Ishouldlike to know where she's going.""To the pharmacy, for medicine for her mother, or to the herborist for lime-blossoms, to maketisanne," said Guguste, who shrewdly anticipated a request on the part of the elderly ladies that he would arise and play the spy upon the movements of Mademoiselle Claire."Pho! pho! The old lady's only trouble-sick, which would be a deal worse than body-sick, only that it don't require no physic," observed the porteress."Then she's gone to the laundress.""Laundress, indeed!" cried the fat housekeeper; "as if low-lived people like the third-floor wasn't their own laundress!""Pardon me, my dear Ma'me Alexandre," cried the porteress. "You know we don't allow no hanging out inthishouse. There's not a more partic'larer landlord in——""'Tis my true and honest belief," interrupted the lady in the silk-cloak, "that the girl is gone to the Mont de Piété! I said to Robert, our footman, when he was taking up master's apricot marmalade, that 'twould be a deal more to the purpose if he took up a good dish of cutlets, or africandeau; for, as you and I was agreeing t'other day, my dear Ma'me Grégoire, not an ounce of anything eatable beyond daily bread ever goes up these blessed stairs to the third-floor. And, what's more, I've noticed strange changes in Miss and Madam since they took up in the house; I don't mean in point of growing thin and meagre, 'cause care alone, without starving, will bring the poor body of a poor soul down to nothing. But, the day as their goods came in, Ma'mselle Courson had as good a cloak over her shoulders as the one on mine (which cost me a good hundred and thirty livres in the Passage de l'Orme,) and Ma'mselle Claire's havinga velvet collar doubtless might be counted at twenty more. What's become of it, I should like to know?""Ay, what's become of it, eh?" added the porteress, tapping her box."Certes!people thathasa comfortable cloak is apt to put it on such nights as this!" rejoined the housekeeper; "but I say nothing.""The young lady may have lent it to her mamma, who is indisposed," pleaded Guguste. "Fuel is ris' within the week. I don't suppose they've too much fire.""Lent it to her mamma, indeed!" cried Madame Alexandre. "Why, Madame Courson has as handsome a Thibet shawl as ever came out of Ternaux's factory.""Had," emended the porteress. "I haven't seen the red shawl on her shoulders these three weeks. On that point I has my suspicions."A single rap, Parisian-wise, at theporte cochère, produced the usual professional tug at thecordon. The gate flew open; and, peeping in at the window-pane, was seen the rubicund face of Monsieur Paul Emile Pruin, the grocer, come in search of his loitering guest."So, so, so!" cried he, on detecting her in the thick of gossip with the grandmamma of Dodore. "Thisis the way you keep your appointments,ma belle voisine? Haven't we had the hearth made up these three quarters of an hour, candles snuffed, (bougies de l'étoile, always a-snuffing!) a fresh bottle ofgroseille frambroiséeready to be uncorked, and a batch ofbiscuits de Rheimsready to be opened?—SawMonsieur le Député'scarriage bowl out, and been hoping ever since to see you bowl in. Poor Madame Paul in the fidgets, as if she'd swallowed a flight of swallows,—up and down,—in and out. Sent me over with the umbrella to look after you.""Thank you,—thank you!" cried Madame Alexandre. "'Tis the first of the month, you see," she continued, winking at the blind old porteress (to whom a nod and wink were much alike) to back her apologies. "I'd my little postage account to settle with my good friend here. But now I'm at your service.Allons!""Guguste, my dear, show the lantern to Madame Alexandre over theruisseau," said the porteress, turning round to look for her boarder. But Guguste had disappeared. He had perhaps sneaked away to track the mysterious footsteps of Mademoiselle de Courson.

BY TOBY ALLSPY.

The Boulevards may be said to perform for Paris the functions fulfilled by the cestus of Venus towards that amphibious goddess, by surrounding it with a magic girdle of fascinations. Every sort and variety of entertainment is to be found comprised in their cincture of the city,—from the stately Académie de Musique and Italian Opera (full of dandies and dowagers), to the trestles of rope-dancers, amphitheatres of dancing-dogs, and galleries of wax-work, (full of ploughboys and pickpockets,)—and every species of domicile, from the gorgeous hôtel to the humble stalls of the vendors of liquorice-water andgalette. At one extremity we have the costlymenuof the Café de Paris, with itsortolansandpoudings à la Nessebrode; at the other, the greasyfricotsof La Courtille. The Café Turc brays forth with Tolbecque, and an orchestra of trumpets and bassoons; theguinguettesof the Faubourg St. Antoine scrape away with their solitary fiddle. Every species of shop and merchandize, from the sumptuousmagazinof Le Revenant to theboutique à vingt-cinq sous; every species of temple, from the Parthenonic Madeleine, to that aërial shrine of liberty, the site of the Bastille. Every gradation of display between splendour and misery is epitomized in the circuit of the Boulevards.

Play, opera, farce, feats of equestrianism, funambulism, somnambulism, and humbugism of every colour, industrious fleas, and idle vendors of magic eye-salve, successively arrest the attention; while in the vicinity of the Café Tortoni, famous for the coldness of its ices and heat of its quarrels, thecourtier marronplies his trade of trickery; stock-jobbing has full possession of thepavé; and almost within hearing of the knowing ears of the Jockey-Club, and the ears polite of theClub Anglais, bulls and bears outbellow the fashionable jabber of the Boulevards.

On emerging from the head-quarters of English Paris,—the Rue de la Paix,—to the Boulevards des Capucines and des Italiens, the eye is dazzled by gilding, gas-light, plate-glass, scagliola, or moulu, varnished counters, and panelling in grotesque and arabesque, interspersed with glittering mirrors, as appliances and means of getting off the lowest goods at the highest rate. A little further, and by an imperceptible gradation, vice succeeds to frivolity. Instead of milliners and jewellers, we find billiard-tables and gambling-houses, deepening at length, into the more tremendous hazards of the Stock Exchange. After passing the vicinity of the Bourse, we come, naturally enough, to the quarter of the Jews; passing through the speculative neighbourhood of Le Passage des Panoramas, which is but a splendid game of chance materialised into stone and marble.

Next to this gaudy section of the modern Babylon dwells solid trade,—the streets of St. Denis and St. Martin,—accompanied by such theatres and such coffee-houses as might be expected to minister to the sensual and intellectual delights of themarchand en gros; melo-drama, and the Porte St. Martin,—theCadran Bleu, and its unctuouscuisine. The vicinage of Rag Fair (themarché aux vieuxlinges) succeeds; then the Boulevard still bearing the name of Beaumarchais (the mansion formerly inhabited by the creator of Figaro being appropriately occupied by a refinery of salt); and lastly, in the wake of rags and wits, the site of the Bastille,—the rallying-point of the most seditious parish of Paris, the republican quarter of the manufacturers, the tremendous Faubourg St. Antoine.

It was precisely at the boundary limit between the pleasure and business sections of the Boulevards, at the corner of the Rue du Faubourg Montmartre, on an airy second-floor with a projecting balcony, commanding a view of the sporting world to the right, and the trading world to the left,—the idle west, and active east,—that there lived a certain Monsieur Georges,—a little wizened man, of doubtful age, doubtful fortune, doubtful reputation. Everything about him was equivocal. In Paris people occupy themselves far less than in London with the affairs of their neighbours: the great have something better to do, the little something worse; the rich being too busy with play, the poor too busy with work, to have leisure for the dirty scandals which spring up likefungiin that region of lords and lackeys, Grosvenor Square. Nevertheless, the porter's lodge of every Parisian house is a chartered temple of echo, having a gossipry and a jargon of its own. The porter's lodge knits stockings, reads novels, and composes romances; peeps into letters, interrogates chambermaids, and confederates with duns. A man loose in his habits had need be very close in his domestics, in order to escape the detection of his porter's lodge.

Yet, in spite of fifteen years' domiciliation in that polished corner of the Boulevards, Monsieur Georges, though far from a beauty, was still a mystery.Madame la portièrehad never been able to discover whether "Georges" was a surname given by father to son, or a Christian name given by godfather to godson. She sometimes thought him a single man, sometimes a double, nay, sometimes a treble. Curious varieties of the fair sex occasionally visited the balconied saloon,—young, old, and middle-aged,—shabby-genteels who passed for poor relations, and glaring tawdry who passed for worse. There was no roost in his abode, however, either for the birds with fine feathers, or the birds without. Monsieur Georges's foible was not that of hospitality. His interests were too intimately cared for by a ferociousfemme de confiance, who set himself and his house in order, and caused his establishment to be designated in the neighbourhood as that of Georges and the Dragon.

If not generous, however, the little man was strictly just; he gave nothing, but he kept nothing back. He paid his way with the praiseworthy punctuality remarkable in those who never pay an inch of the way for other people.

It is a hard thing, by-the-bye, that while male designations leave the facts of the man's bachelorhood uncertain, a spinster is specially pointed out by the malice of conventional phraseology. Mr. or Monsieur may be married or single, as he pleases; but Mrs. and Madame assume, even on the direction of a letter, their airs of matronly superiority over Miss or Mademoiselle. While her master rejoiced in his ambiguity asMonsieurGeorges,MademoiselleBerthe was designated to mankind and womankind in all the odium of spinsterhood; and exclamations of "old maid" and "chissie" followed herdaily passage past the porter's lodge, the moment the "grim white woman" reached the first floor.

Among those who indulged in the acrimonious apostrophe, the most persevering, if not the loudest, was an urchin of some fourteen years old, whom Monsieur Georges had added to his establishment two years before, by way of Jack Nasty, foot-page, or errand-boy, under an engagement to clean Monsieur Georges and the housekeeper's shoes, without dirtying the ante-room with his own; to work much, eat little, sleep less; to keep his ears open, and his mouth shut; his hands full, and his stomach empty; his legs were to be evermore running, his tongue never. Now, little Auguste, (Auguste in the parlour, and Guguste in the porter's lodge,) though reared in a provincial foundling hospital, where infants are fed, like sheep, on a common, by the score, and washed, like pocket-handkerchiefs, by the dozen, had unluckily both a will and an appetite of his own. Cleaning Mademoiselle Berthe's shoes inspired him with a fancy for standing in them; and, on more than one occasion, he was found to have encroached upon the housekeeper's breakfast of coffee and cream, instead of contenting himself with wholesome filtred water. He was forthwith accused of being a greedy pig, as well as of making a litter in the apartments; till, after six months of faultiness and fault-finding, Monsieur Georges pronounced him to be an incorrigiblegamin, sentenced him to "bring firing at requiring," and blacken shoes as usual, but to have his bed in an attic under the roof, (Parisianly called, after the famous Parisian architect, amansarde,) and his board in the porter's lodge, where the board was exceedingly hard; Madame Grégoire,—the knitter of stockings, reader of novels, and coiner of romances for the corner-house of the Rue Montmartre,—having consented to feed and cherish him at the rate of twenty-five francs per month,id est, five weekly shillings lawful coin of her Majesty's realm. Monsieur Georges perhaps intended to starve the saucy gamin into submission; hedidalmost succeed in starving him into an atrophy.

Guguste, however, was a lad of spirit, and could hunger cheerfully under the housekeeping of the kind-hearted Madame Grégoire, who made up for the scantiness of her cheer by the abundance of her cheerfulness, buttered her parsnips with fine words, and gave the poor half-clothedgaminthe place nearest thechauffrette, (fire she had none,) while Mademoiselle Berthe made the apartment on the second floor too hot to hold him. Madame Grégoire,—whose only daughter was the wife of a puppet-showman, and whose only grandson, a seller of sparrowsrouged et noiredinto bullfinches, or white-washed into canaries, on the Pont Neuf,—transferred a considerable portion of her unclaimed dividends of maternal tenderness to the little orphan. Her son was a soldier, serving (as she said) at Algiers in the Indies, and by no means likely to enter into rivalship with the slave of Monsieur Georges and Mademoiselle Berthe's household.

"'Tis a strange thing, my dear child," mumbled the old woman to Guguste, as they sat down together one day to their six o'clock soup, (a composition of hot water, cabbage-stalks, half an ounce of bacon, and a peck of salt,) "that so long as I have held the string[29]in this house, not a drop of wine, either in piece or bottle, has ever gone through the gateway to the address of Monsieur Georges! Every month comes the supply of chocolate from Marquise's for Monsieur, and from the Golden Bee a cargo of Bourbon coffee and beetroot sugar for the housekeeper; but of wine not a pint."

"Neither Georges nor the Dragon are honest souls enough to trust themselves with their cups," said the knowinggamin. "Wine tells truth, they say. None but an ass talks now-a-days of truth lying at the bottom of a well;—'tis in the bottom of a hogshead of claret. Ma'mselle Berthe, who can do nothing but lie, is the liar in the well.Shecan't keep her head above water."

"But Monsieur Georges, who need entertain no fear of making too free with his own secrets after a glass or two, inasmuch as no living mortal ever dips with him in the dish;—surely Monsieur might indulge on Sundays, and fête days, and the like?"

"And so he does indulge, Maman Grégoire,—so he does! Some folks like their champagne, some their burgundy. Master loves to take an internal hot-bath after the English fashion."

"A tea-drinker?sacristie!what effeminacy!" exclaimed the old woman, bravely swallowing, out of a spoon ofmétal d'Alger, a large mouthful of tepid cabbage water. "I recollect seeing tea made upon the stage, in the farce of 'Madame Pochet et Madame Gibou.'Jésu!what nastiness! I really wonder at Monsieur Georges! So spruce and so cleanly a gentleman as he looks, when, every evening just as St. Philip's church chimes the half-hour after seven, 'Le cordon, s'il vous plait,' gives me notice of his exit! His superfine blue coat and garnet-coloured velvet waistcoat without a speck of dust upon them!"

"Thanks tome!" interposed Guguste.

"Histoupetshining withhuile antique."

"Thanks tome!" continued Guguste.

"His boots varnished like looking-glasses."

"Thanks tome!" pursued Guguste.

"His hat smoothed as with an iron."

"Thanks tome,—thanks tome!"

"Hisjabotplaited as if by machinery, and white as snow; while his great diamond studs look out like eyes of fire from the frilling,—"

"Thank to—no, not thanks tome!" cried Guguste. "I must own that Ma'mselle Berthe, who is so much in the starch line, still presides in the washing and ironing department; and, as to the brilliants, which you say shine in the dark like cats' eyes, master keeps them like the apple of his own."

"I wonder what makes him so wonderful particular about his dress after nightfall?" said Madame Grégoire, peering through her spectacles into the face which she was preparing to cross-examine. "Humph?"

"Can't say," replied Guguste, tilting the soup-tureen to transfer the last drop of warm salt-water to his own plate.

"You meanwon't; youcouldfast enough if you would, child!" said Madame Grégoire pettishly.

"Bah!" cried thegamin, (who was perhaps of opinion that the kicks, which, more than half-pence, constituted his salary in Monsieur Georges's service, formed a tie upon his discretions,)—"howcanyou, Ma'me Grégoire, who are such a very sensible woman, imagine it possible, that while I am clearing away the dinner things down stairs in the porter's lodge, or up stairs in Ma'mselle Berthe's chamber, I can have an eye to master's proceedings after he has crossed his threshold! Maybe he goes to the opera."

"Three nights in the week. But the other four?"

"There are fifteen theatres open, as I've heard tell, in the city and the suburbs," quoth Guguste drily.

"But, gentlemen asisgentlemen (which is what Monsieur Georges calls himself, however he may be called by others,) don't put on diamond studs and embroidered waistcoats, to go to the playhouses!"

"Don't they? How should I know?" demanded Guguste, polishing the pewter spoon on his sleeve as he was accustomed to do those of his master's double-threaded silver. "What do I see of playhouses?"

"Why, you ungrateful child! didn't I give you a ticket for the pit of the Porte St. Martin, for that moving piece, 'The Spectre Abbot,' on the night of Ma'mselle Isoline's benefit, the deputy-double of the general-utilityjeune prémière, who lodges up stairs in the back attic, next but one to your own?"

"Yes; I saw 'The Spectre Abbot,' and Ma'mselle Isoline into the bargain, with three-quarters of a yard of red calico hanging to her waist, to represent the 'Bleeding Nun;' but I didn't take any notice whether the gentleman whose elbows were jammed into my sides wore diamond studs or velvet waistcoats."

"At all events you must perceive that the highly-respectable gentleman who occupies our splendid first-floor apartment, (Monsieur Boncoeur, the deputy,) goes out every evening in his carriage in a very different costume?"

"Monsieur Boncoeur, in his carriage, need not hoist a flag of gentility. Monsieur Georges, on foot, might be hustled off the pavement but for his brilliants."

"More likelyforthem," said the porteress.

"Besides, Monsieur Boncoeur is, as you say, such a very respectable-looking gentleman! His dark, square-cut coat, and pepper-and-salts; his broad-brimmed hat, and sad-coloured gloves; his whole outward man seems to have been taken measure of as the picture of respectability! And see what that very respectability has brought him to! Partner in one of the first houses in the Rue Bergère; deputy in the chamber;marguillierof the parish; a ribbon in his button-hole; and the picture of himself and his ribbon face to face with the portrait of Louis Philippe, at the gallery of the Exposition, for all the world as if they'd a little word to say to each other in public. Lord bless you! Monsieur Boncoeur's respectable grey whiskers, respectable speckled stockings, respectable great-coat and umbrella, are worth a couple of hundred thousand francs a year to the banking-house in the Rue Bergère, as vouchers for the square-toeishness of the firm!"

"Lord love thee, child! at thy years how shouldst thou know so much of the world!" cried Madame Grégoire, removing her spectacles after this tirade, as if all further perspicacity were superfluous.

"By being thrown upon it from the moment I had years to count," cried the urchin. "A foundling hospital, Ma'me Grég. is a famouswhetstone, against which no one can rub without sharpening his wits!"

"But, since thine are so sharp, boy, how comes it thou hast never discovered whither Monsieur Georges directs his steps every evening, winter and summer, at half-past seven."

"Because 'tis my business to know, and I prefer my pleasure. I've some sort ofright, you see, to interest myself in master's proceedings; but in those of Monsieur Boncoeur of the first floor, Ma'mselle Isoline of the attic, Madame la Baronne de Gimbecque, the pretty lady with the handsomecachemires,coupé, and black eyes, who lodges in theentrésol, and Madame Courson, the widow lady, on thetroisième, I've nothing but wrong; and, accordingly, not a step do they take with which I am not conversant. I could tell you, if you wanted to know, where Madame Courson's poor, little, pale, patient daughter, Demoiselle Claire——"

"Thank ye,—thank ye! I fancy I know more of my lodgers thanyoudo! All I ask you, is, concerning your master. Monsieur Georges is the only inmate of this house for whom it has ever been my fortune to pull the string without discovering, before the end of the first term, the source of his income, where he came from, whither he was going, and——"

"Good evening, grandmamma!" squeaked a voice at the moveable pane of the glass-door,—the arrow-slit, ormeurtrière, through which every porteress is privileged to parley with visitors at meal-times or in windy weather.

"'Tis Dodo!" exclaimed Guguste, rising to open the latch for the lean and impish-looking grandson of Madame Grégoire, whose wistful glances in eyeing the empty tureen plainly indicated that his visit had been miscalculated by a quarter of an hour.

"Mother desired me to call and inquire after the rheumatic pain in your right shoulder," continued Dodo, (the short for Dodore,—which is short for Theodore, in cockney Parisian.)

"'Twas in my left, and it has left me," said the old woman peevishly; "and don't sit on that chair, child. The knitting-needles in the stocking may do you a mischief. How's your mother?"

"Mamma's got a cold, sitting out in the showers yesterday afternoon, to finish shaving a poodle which a customer was werry particular to get done in time to go out to dinner."

"Humph! I fancied, Dodo,youhad taken that part of the business off her hands. I thought she made over the scissors to you at Michaelmas last?"

"And so she did for anything of plain work," replied the brat; "but this was a choice customer, and a bit of fancy work; a great big greybarbet, which stands as high as a rocking-horse, whose master is curious in his shaving. The gentleman's a poet, what does the off-rightsromantiquefor Victor Hugo's plaything playhouse at the Porte St. Antoine; and, as the vulgars is apt to have their poodles lion-fashion, Monsieur Eugène gives hisn a mane and forelock; which, with cropped ears, looks for all the world like a unicorn!"

"What an ass!" cried Madame Grégoire contemptuously, tapping her snuff-box. "These poet and player folk makes themselves notorious, and fancies themselves famous!"

"And how goes on your own business, Dodo?" demanded Guguste, assuming in the presence of the starveling of nine years old the airs of a man of the world.

"Pretty smart, thank ye. I've just set up two new sparrow-traps in a ditch under the barrack-wall at Montrouge; and last week I sold a pair of as fine canaries as a coating of plaster of Paris and gamboge could make 'em, to a fine English lady in a carriage, as was crossing the bridge to the flower-market. Gave the brace of birds for nine francs, one of which I slipped into the hand of herlaquais de place. But then I was out of business, you see, for three days a'twards, for fear of the police."

"Dodo, you'll be disgracing your family one of these days by being took up!" said Madame Grégoire impressively. "I remember my respectable first-floor, Monsieur Boncoeur, bringing home a piping bullfinch last year he'd bought on the Boulevards, whose red breast washed off the first showery day, all as one as Ma'mselle Isoline's rouge after a flood of tears in a melodrame! The poor dear gentleman had half a mind to have up the seller of the impositious bird before the commissary of the district; only, as he'd paid for it with an old coat unbeknownst to his valet, and an old coat not being lawful coin of the realm, there was a doubt in his mind about his power of bringing the vagabond to justice."

"Which? Himself, or the impositious bird, or the industrious fowler as was arning a living for his family?" inquired Guguste.

"Hush!" cried Madame Grégoire, laying her hand on the cord as Monsieur Georges' thin voice was heard giving utterance to his usual evening cry of "Le cordon!" Guguste slunk behind her high-backed chair as his tyrant passed the window,—his withered, sallow face enlivened by his gold-mounted spectacles, and his mean person coquetted into consequence, perforce of velvet and trinkets. Burnished from top to toe, he was the very moral of one of Giroux's toys, the veryimmoral of achevalier d'industrie.

Certain that his master's exit would be the signal for his being fetched out of that, by the shrill summons of Ma'mselle Berthe to set the place in order, and make up the fire, (against the arrival of her cousin, Madame Dosne, an ex-box-opener of the Ambigu Comique, who occupied a chamber in the story above, and was admitted to the honour of seeing her prim relative play patience, and of sipping a glass of sugar and water with her on a long winter's evening,) Guguste flitted upward to the discharge of his duties, leaving the skinny imp of the Pont Neuf and his grandam to commune of domestic matters. While waiting the summons of Monsieur Boncoeur's demure-looking footman to open the gate for the demure-looking chariot of that highly demure and respectable individual, Madame Grégoire accordingly interrogated the boy concerning his father's absence from the sweets of his domestic hearth.

"Papa is making a tour in the south," replied the imp. "He passed the summer in the Pyrenees. The Pyrenees are quite in fashion in papa's line of business!"

"Ay, 'tis well for him that Gothon likes him to lead such a rambling life!" said Madame Grégoire in a moralizing tone. "When my poor daughter thought proper to marry a showman, I told her how it would be! To think, now, of a child of mine, a respectableportièrein the same house, of the same parish, for forty years' standing."

"The house?"

"Thehouse, ignoramus!—The house is a century old, built by the Regent Duke of Orleans, father of his unfortunate majesty, Louis XIV, as you might read in history,—if you knew how to read.—To think of a child of mine, I say, squatting on a wooden stool, like a wild Indian, winter and summer, with nothing but a cold river under her feet, and cold oil-cloth over her head, on the look-out for a poodle in want of clipping, or some mouse-eaten-out-of-house-and-home baker in want of a tabby kitten! I protest I never think of my poor Gothon and her stock-in-trade,—her cage of cats on one side, and her string of puppies on the other,—without bitter anguish of soul. Why can't your father stay at home, Dodore, and set up in the Champs Elysées, or at thebarrières, like other respectable men of his profession, to be nearer home?"

"Bless your heart!" remonstrated Dodo, "papa took up his station three years ago, on the way along the Allée d'Antin, to the Suspension Bridge. But it all but made a bankrupt of him! There was too much competition. Pierre the Savoyard, who had his show-box within fifty yards, has such a winning way with him that not a nurse-maid, or English lord coming out of Lepage's shooting-gallery, but used to throw silver to Pierre, where papa took only the brownest of copper. At last, a nasty, good-for-nothing, designing Jesuit of a fellow set up in opposition to both on 'em; Scripture pieces, with Jepfa's daughters, and Dalily and Goliar, a hand-organ, and Dutch pug as held an old hat, and what not. Papa bore it as long as he was able; but what was the good of opposition atween friends? He'd nothing in his box but worn-out things, as old as Methusalem or Jerusalem, or whatever it is, such as the battle of Marengo, and the Pyramids, and the landing of Xerxes in the Hellyspunt and a pack of low-lived fancies. So mamma persuaded him to try the provinces (where, as all the world knows, the stalest bread goes down); and so, from fair to fair, he's been touring it this twelvemonth."

"Poor Gothon!"

"Mamma doesn't fret. She says I shall soon be old enough to take papa's business off his shoulders, and then he'll be able to retire comfortable; and she'll give up her stall on the Pont Neuf, and the kitten and canary line, to sister Mary."

Madame Grégoire was about to remonstrate against this perpetuation of open-air commerce in her posterity, when Monsieur Boncoeur's signal was given; and, lo, the well-varnished, well-stuffed, but plain chariot of the thriving banker, rolled after his fat and bean-fed horses out of the court-yard.

Some minutes afterwards, his portlyfemme de ménage, Madame Alexandre, stepped into the lodge for a few minutes' gossip with the porteress previous to proceeding to her evening'sBostonwith the grocer's lady at the opposite corner. The comely housekeeper, in her silk-cloak and bonnet, was naturally an object of dislike and envy to the witheredportière, in her ragged merino gown and dingy calico cap. But Christmas was approaching. Herétrennesfor New Year's Day (to the sum total of which, the first-floor contributed three-fourths)were seldom absent from Madame Grégoire's calculations. Besides, Monsieur Boncoeur's housekeeper was to be conciliated as a connecting link in her chain of domestic investigation; for Madame Alexandre not only afforded her quota of information concerning her own and her master's affairs, but, in pure pryingness of spirit, contrived to see through stone-walls, and hear down chimneys, while striving to put this and that together concerning those of her fellow-lodgers.

"Well, Madame Grégoire, what is the best news with us this evening?" demanded the jolly dame, as soon as the porteress had despatched her hungry grandson home to his mamma, the kittens and canaries. "I'm just stepping out, you see, for my little game with the Pruins. Poor people, they can't do without me! If I warn't with them before the clock struck eight, I should be having them here after me; and, to be filling the house with visitors during master's absence, is a thing I'm not in the habit of doing, as nobody knows, better than yourself. Indeed, it's a matter of conscience that takes me out the moment his back is turned. As afemme de confiance, I'm bound to see there's no waste; and where there's visitors theremustbe tippling and stuffing; so, out of regard to Monsieur Boncoeur's property, I'm seldom in the house ten minutes after him. I hope I know my duty by so respectable a master better than to make away with his goods like Ma'mselle Berthe up yonder, who keeps open house like a lady, with as many rings at her bells of an evening as e'er a duchess in the land! But, as I was saying, Madame Grégoire,—(Dearie me, I thought I wasn't by no means comfortable! I've been sitting on the knitting-needles! lucky my cloak was wadded!)—as I was saying, have you made out anything further about them Coursons?"

"Scarce a syllable more than the first day they took possession! One knowed they was respectable, 'cause our proprietor is exceeding particular about references,—(there isn't a partic'larer landlord from one end of the Boulevards to t'other!)—and one knowed they waspoor, 'cause their moveables came on a porter's truck, instead of occupying a cart and horse, as becomes a creditable lodger, or instead of occupying three vans of theadministration des déménagemens, as was the case, I remember, when our respectable first-floor moved in."

Madame Alexandre smiled a neat and appropriate smile of acknowledgment for her master; while the porteress took breath, a pinch of snuff, and proceeded.

"But as to their origin, and sitch, I know no more than Adam! Not an acquaintance in the parish! I even put the water-carrier upon asking about the neighbourhood; but no such name as Courson was ever heard of! How do we know, pray, who we've got among us? Courson may be a sham name, such as we reads of in Monsieur Jules Janin's novels!"

"Such rubbish, indeed!" said Madame Alexandre, with a sneer, intended, like the epithet, to apply to the lodgers on the third-floor, ignored by the water-carrier and public-houses in the neighbourhood,notto Monsieur Janin's novels, which were probably familiar to them all.

"Would you believe it, ma'am? there's the saucy minx of adaughter (Ma'mselle Claire, I think, you told me was her name,) has the owdacity to bid me good morning or good evening if I haps to meet her on the stairs, affable-like, as if she felt me her inferiorer! Me! Now I don't know, Ma'me Grégoire, what your opinion may be, butIholds (and so does my friends, the Pruins,) that the upper domestics of the first-floor is on a 'quality with the lodgers of the third, that keeps no domestics at all."

"Certainly, ma'am, certainly," replied the porteress, still harping on the amount of her New Year's gift. "But have you made out nothing of these people's occupations? You're two floors nigher to 'em than me. If I was inyourplace——"

"If you was in that of the housekeeper of Monsieur Georges, you mean! Ma'mselle Berthe's store-closet looks clean into Ma'mselle Claire's room."

"Looks dirty in," emended the prying porteress.

"And, if Ma'mselle Berthe wasn't as dry as a handful of deal shavings, maybe I might have demeaned myself to ask her in a friendly way how the young lady passed her mornings. But Ma'mselle Berthe (thechissie!) condescends to hold just about as much communication with me as one of the chayney mandarins on the top of master's cabinet,—shakes her head by way of salutation, and not a word!"

"But, Guguste (Monsieur Georges's little lad of all work and no play) assured me he saw Ma'mselle Courson ring at Monsieur Boncoeur's bell the other day, and deliver a letter to the footman."

"Oho! that dirty littlegaminplays the spy upon those who rings at Monsieur Boncoeur's bell, do he?" cried the housekeeper, reddening. "Very dirty behaviour, I must confess!"

"But, my dear madam, my dear friend," whined the porteress in a tone of deprecation, "did not you yourself inform me that Monsieur Boncoeur's footman carried up on Sunday se'nnight, by Monsieur Boncoeur's desire, to Ma'mselle Claire, a box of apricot marmalade, and the last number of the 'Follet'?"

"I said no such thing, ma'am, as I remember. The marmalade and the journal was both lawfully directed to Madame Courson. I never so much as insinnivated a word of an intention of attention to Mademoiselle!"

"Then I miscomprehended, ma'am; in which I'm the more to blame, because, from the highly-respectable character of the mansion for which I have the honour to pull the string, (there isn't, as I said before, a more partic'larer landlord than the proprietor from one end of the Boulevarts to t'other,) I might have known that even the letters of a gentleman so distinguished as my first-floor would never have been received by Ma'mselle, the daughter of Madame Courson."

"That's all you know about it,—is it?" cried the lusty housekeeper, crimsoning with pique. "Then be so good as to tell me what makes such a young lady as Ma'mselle, Madame Courson's daughter, write written letters to so distinguished a gentleman as your first-floor? Answer me that!"

"She couldn't be guilty of anything so heinous!" cried the porteress, aghast.

"I tell you shewas!"

"Youmustbe mistaken!"

"Seeing is believing, Madame Grégoire!"

"Ay! you may have seen herdelivera written letter, poor dear, from her mamma, in all probability?"

"No such thing!—from herself."

"Now, how can you possibly know! Did you see her write it? Do you even know her handwriting?"

"I know her signature,—'Claire de Courson;' and you told me your werry self, that the agreement for the lodgings was signed by her mother as 'Emilie de Courson.'"

"But the signature was inside the written letter. How could you seethat?"

"No matter; I did see it with my two eyes as plain as I see you."

"And that's plain enough," muttered Guguste, who, having crept back unobserved into the room, was skulking in a corner.

"Why, sure you didn't go to peep?" said the porteress, with a knowing look of inquiry and accusation.

"What a one you are!" cried Madame Alexandre, trying to turn off jocularly her self-betrayal. "But, not to haggle with partic'lars of how the letter came into my hands, into my hands it came; and what should it be, but a private confidentialtête-à-têteepistle from the young lady, saying how Monsieur Boncoeur's reputation for benevolence was up in the neighbourhood, and how he seemed inclined to befriend her poor mother, (the apricot marmalade, you know!) and how it would be a great charity (no, not charity,—act of humanity the shabby-genteels calls it,) if he would exert his interest to procure for her mamma a privilege to sell stamps, abureau de papier timbré; for which, of course, his petitioner was ever bound to pray, and so forth."

"I hope they don't think of setting up anything in the shop or office line in a house like ourn?" cried Madame Grégoire, with dignity. "They'll find theirself plaguily out of their reckoning!—for I must say it, who shouldn't say it, that there isn't a more partic'larer landlord."

"I'll just tell you what," ruthlessly interrupted Madame Alexandre, twitching her silk cloak, as if meditating departure. "Tonight's Monday, you know."

"Yes, Idoknow."

"And that's the reception-night, you know, of the Minister of the Home Department."

"No, I didn't know."

"And, as sure as life,——"

"Lord lovee, Ma'me Alexandre, don't use that profane expression! There's nothing less sure than life!" cried Madame G. while Auguste groaned in the background.

"As sure as a gun, then——"

Again Auguste groaned.

"—Master's gone this evening to the hotel of theMinistre de l'Interieur, to present Ma'mselle Claire's petition for a stamp-office."

"Do you really think things of that sort are done in that sort of straight-for'ard way?" demanded the porteress. "Ifancied that, when you wanted anything of government, you got a word said for you to the cousin of some clerk-of-a-deputy-to-an-under-commissioner,with, maybe, a genteel little offering, to make it go down,—such as a Savoy cake, or a China rose-tree in a flower-pot."

"Nonsense! You're thinking of folks of your own species," said the housekeeper disdainfully.

"You forget that my master, Monsieur Boncoeur,'s a representative of the nation, a governor of the Bank of France, and amarguillierof the parish. Master's a right to go straight an end to the king, and tell his majesty any little wish he may have ungratified. And, if heshouldthink proper to mention to Louis Philippe Ma'mselle Claire's desire that her mamma should set up a bureau for stamps, her business is done!"

They were interrupted by the starting up of Guguste, who was crouching behind them, and placed an admonitory finger on his lip to impose silence upon Madame Grégoire's meditated rejoinder, just as a very white hand, holding a very black key, was intruded into the room through the porter's window; and the silvery accents of Mademoiselle Courson were heard, announcing to the porteress that she was going out for half an hour; and that, though her mother remained at home, she was indisposed, and could receive no visitors."

"Visitors, indeed! Who ever comes to visitthem, I should like to know!" muttered Madame Grégoire, after pulling thecordonto admit of the young lady's egress.

"She certainlyhada bundle under her arm!" cried Madame Alexandre, who had been watching the young lady through the window. "Now, how Ishouldlike to know where she's going."

"To the pharmacy, for medicine for her mother, or to the herborist for lime-blossoms, to maketisanne," said Guguste, who shrewdly anticipated a request on the part of the elderly ladies that he would arise and play the spy upon the movements of Mademoiselle Claire.

"Pho! pho! The old lady's only trouble-sick, which would be a deal worse than body-sick, only that it don't require no physic," observed the porteress.

"Then she's gone to the laundress."

"Laundress, indeed!" cried the fat housekeeper; "as if low-lived people like the third-floor wasn't their own laundress!"

"Pardon me, my dear Ma'me Alexandre," cried the porteress. "You know we don't allow no hanging out inthishouse. There's not a more partic'larer landlord in——"

"'Tis my true and honest belief," interrupted the lady in the silk-cloak, "that the girl is gone to the Mont de Piété! I said to Robert, our footman, when he was taking up master's apricot marmalade, that 'twould be a deal more to the purpose if he took up a good dish of cutlets, or africandeau; for, as you and I was agreeing t'other day, my dear Ma'me Grégoire, not an ounce of anything eatable beyond daily bread ever goes up these blessed stairs to the third-floor. And, what's more, I've noticed strange changes in Miss and Madam since they took up in the house; I don't mean in point of growing thin and meagre, 'cause care alone, without starving, will bring the poor body of a poor soul down to nothing. But, the day as their goods came in, Ma'mselle Courson had as good a cloak over her shoulders as the one on mine (which cost me a good hundred and thirty livres in the Passage de l'Orme,) and Ma'mselle Claire's havinga velvet collar doubtless might be counted at twenty more. What's become of it, I should like to know?"

"Ay, what's become of it, eh?" added the porteress, tapping her box.

"Certes!people thathasa comfortable cloak is apt to put it on such nights as this!" rejoined the housekeeper; "but I say nothing."

"The young lady may have lent it to her mamma, who is indisposed," pleaded Guguste. "Fuel is ris' within the week. I don't suppose they've too much fire."

"Lent it to her mamma, indeed!" cried Madame Alexandre. "Why, Madame Courson has as handsome a Thibet shawl as ever came out of Ternaux's factory."

"Had," emended the porteress. "I haven't seen the red shawl on her shoulders these three weeks. On that point I has my suspicions."

A single rap, Parisian-wise, at theporte cochère, produced the usual professional tug at thecordon. The gate flew open; and, peeping in at the window-pane, was seen the rubicund face of Monsieur Paul Emile Pruin, the grocer, come in search of his loitering guest.

"So, so, so!" cried he, on detecting her in the thick of gossip with the grandmamma of Dodore. "Thisis the way you keep your appointments,ma belle voisine? Haven't we had the hearth made up these three quarters of an hour, candles snuffed, (bougies de l'étoile, always a-snuffing!) a fresh bottle ofgroseille frambroiséeready to be uncorked, and a batch ofbiscuits de Rheimsready to be opened?—SawMonsieur le Député'scarriage bowl out, and been hoping ever since to see you bowl in. Poor Madame Paul in the fidgets, as if she'd swallowed a flight of swallows,—up and down,—in and out. Sent me over with the umbrella to look after you."

"Thank you,—thank you!" cried Madame Alexandre. "'Tis the first of the month, you see," she continued, winking at the blind old porteress (to whom a nod and wink were much alike) to back her apologies. "I'd my little postage account to settle with my good friend here. But now I'm at your service.Allons!"

"Guguste, my dear, show the lantern to Madame Alexandre over theruisseau," said the porteress, turning round to look for her boarder. But Guguste had disappeared. He had perhaps sneaked away to track the mysterious footsteps of Mademoiselle de Courson.

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