onade, etc., according to the season of the year; and often a supper
is given on a very liberal scale. Dancing, music, singing, and cards
form the amusements of the evening; the games which are played are
generally ecarte and whist.

The passion for dancing pervades all classes, and even amongst the
lowest orders they always find the means of gratifying themselves with
that pleasure, but in all their enjoyments down to the public-houses in
the worst quarters of Paris, there is a degree of decorum which
surprises an Englishman accustomed to the extreme grossness of similar
classes in our own country. Determined to see as much of life as I could
in all its stages during a carnival, accompanied by a countryman I
visited many of the lowest order of wine houses where balls were going
forward; the only payment required for entrance was the purchase of a
bottle of wine, costing six sous. We expected to see a good deal of
uproarious mirth and all kinds of pranks going forward, but were quite
astonished to find the order that prevailed; the men appeared as if they
were in such a hurry for a dance that they had not waited until they
washed their hands and faces, but had just come directly from their
work, although several of them had slipped on masquerade dresses; the
women were cleaner (I suspect they were not of the most immaculate
description), and were amusing themselves with quadrilles and waltzes
alternately. Being of course very differently attired from the rest of
the assemblage, we were very conspicuous, but they took no notice of us
whatever; if they happened to run against us whilst waltzing and
whirling about, they always said "Je vous 'mande pardon, Monsieur," and
nothing farther. We observed that the men paid for the musicians two
sous each dance and the women one, and we came away rather disappointed
at finding things so much more insipid than we expected; we visited
several houses of the same description and found the same sort of scene
going forward in them all. The working people in Paris are extremely
frugal in their mode of living; bread being full seven-eighths of their
food, what they eat with it varies according to the season; if in
summer, mostly such fruit as happens to be ripe, and perhaps once in the
day they take a bit of soft white-looking cheese with their bread. In
winter they often add instead, a little morsel of pork or bacon, but
more frequently stewed pears or roasted apples. On Sundays they alwa