g
sweetened water--surely not a beverage calculated to pollute the palate.
Those round-headed men, whose bald pates are fringed with gray, are now
settling up their score. It is only a franc or two, but each one pays his
share, "treating" not being common. You are often asked to drink, and left
to pay for what you drink--an arrangement greatly to be preferred,
provided it be understood. That stylish-looking man reading the _Figaro_
is drinking a green chartreuse, and every time he stoops to sip from the
little goblet that stands before him, his huge moustache, folding over it,
looks like two great black wings. That pale-faced man is probably a
professor. He has just sweetened his coffee, and is now pocketing the
lumps of sugar remaining over in the little dish (considered a perfectly
proper thing to do); and that stripling from the province, he is taking
account of everything--the velvet, marble, silver, glass, the flowers,
vases, pictured panels, the waiters in their white aprons, the
water-bottles in which the ice is frozen by artificial process, the
crinkle-crankle, gilding, glare, the plants in the doorway and the queen
behind her box.

Looking out upon the sidewalk, all the world is passing by--Guadeloupe
negroes with white servants at their heels; artillerymen with dangling
sabres; cocottes, Englishmen, zouaves; washerwomen and their daughters
carrying skirts suspended from the tops of poles; old men with goggles and
young men with canes and great show of cuffs; multitudes of
distinguished-looking people, _Francais a l'outrance_; people with beaked
noses and olive complexions; clerks and shop-girls, _gamins_ and _bonnes_;
policemen of inferior stature, who though armed with swords, look
incapable of dealing with desperate men; laborers in blouses and old
ladies in caps.

Sitting once in front of the Cafe de la Paix at five o'clock in the
afternoon, and looking through a line of promenaders such as that, I
counted two hundred 'busses, private carriages and hacks, most (or many at
least) of whose occupants were presumably bent on pleasure, to sixteen
carts and other vehicles devoted exclusively to business--eight of which,
by the way, were hand-carts. Oh the gay and happy town! I thought. Where
the turn-outs bear such a proportion to the drays, no wonder cafes thrive,
exquisite drinks are served, and a _corky_ people, who have a happy
faculty, as illustrated by the late war, of coming up the quicker the
farther th