e fellows are very handy, useful, and obliging; and
so far honest, that they will not steal in the usual way. You may
safely trust one of them to bring you a hundred loui'dores from your
banker; but they fleece you without mercy in every other article of
expence. They lay all your tradesmen under contribution; your taylor,
barber, mantua-maker, milliner, perfumer, shoe-maker, mercer, jeweller,
hatter, traiteur, and wine-merchant: even the bourgeois who owns your
coach pays him twenty sols per day. His wages amount to twice as much,
so that I imagine the fellow that serves me, makes above ten shillings
a day, besides his victuals, which, by the bye, he has no right to
demand. Living at Paris, to the best of my recollection, is very near
twice as dear as it was fifteen years ago; and, indeed, this is the
case in London; a circumstance that must be undoubtedly owing to an
increase of taxes; for I don't find that in the articles of eating and
drinking, the French people are more luxurious than they were
heretofore. I am told the entrees, or duties, payed upon provision
imported into Paris, are very heavy. All manner of butcher's meat and
poultry are extremely good in this place. The beef is excellent. The
wine, which is generally drank, is a very thin kind of Burgundy. I can
by no means relish their cookery; but one breakfasts deliciously upon
their petit pains and their pales of butter, which last is exquisite.

The common people, and even the bourgeois of Paris live, at this
season, chiefly on bread and grapes, which is undoubtedly very wholsome
fare. If the same simplicity of diet prevailed in England, we should
certainly undersell the French at all foreign markets for they are very
slothful with all their vivacity and the great number of their holidays
not only encourages this lazy disposition, but actually robs them of
one half of what their labour would otherwise produce; so that, if our
common people were not so expensive in their living, that is, in their
eating and drinking, labour might be afforded cheaper in England than
in France. There are three young lusty hussies, nieces or daughters of
a blacksmith, that lives just opposite to my windows, who do nothing
from morning till night. They eat grapes and bread from seven till
nine, from nine till twelve they dress their hair, and are all the
afternoon gaping at the window to view passengers. I don't perceive
that they give themselves the trouble either to make their