t perhaps some facetious boy might have
transformed me into a walking placard. There was nothing, however; but I
had mustaches and a foreign air! A foreign air! That is one of the
little miseries on which you do not count, oh, simple and inexperienced
travelers!

At home you may have the dignity and nobleness of the Cid--you may be
another Talma: but pass the Channel--show yourself to the English, and
in spite of yourself you will become as comic as Arnal. Arnal! do I say?
why, he would not make them laugh so much as you do; and they would
consider our inimitable comedians, Levassor and Hoffmann, as serious
personages. Do not be angry. They would only laugh the more. In this
respect the English are wanting in good taste and indulgence. Their
astonishment is silly and their mockery puerile. The sight of a pair of
mustaches makes them roar with laughter, and they are in an ecstasy of
fun at the sight of a rather broad-brimmed hat. A people must be very
much bored to seize such occasions of amusing themselves. However, all
the _travers_, like all the qualities of the English, arise from the
national spirit carried to exaggeration. They consider themselves the
_beau ideal_ of human kind. Their stiffness of bearing, their pale
faces, their hair, their whiskers cut into the shape of mutton chops,
the excessive height of their shirt collars, and the inelegant cut of
their coats--all that makes them as proud as Trafalgar and Waterloo.

In our theatres we laugh at them as they laugh at us; and on that score
we are quits. But in our great towns they are much better and more
seriously received than we Frenchmen are in England.

At Paris nowadays nobody laughs at an Englishman; but at London every
body laughs at a Frenchman. We do not make this remark from any feeling
of ill-will; in fact, we think that to cause a smile on the thin and
pinched-up lips of old England is not a small triumph for our beards and
mustaches. After all, too, the astonishment which the Englishman
manifests at the sight of a newly disembarked Frenchman (an astonishment
which appears singular when we call to mind the frequent communications
between the two nations), is less inexplicable than may be thought.
Geographically speaking, France and England touch each other; morally,
they are at an immeasurable distance. Nothing is done at Calais as at
Dover, nothing at London as at Paris. There is as much difference
between the two races as between white and blac