was living as a small _rentier_, in a pretty little house on the main
road from Paris to Versailles.

It was just such a residence as Balzac describes with such minute finish
in his scenes of Parisian and provincial life: a sunny little
_maisonnette_, with green _jalousies_, a row of fine linden trees
clipped into arches in front of it, and behind, the trim garden with its
wonderfully productive dwarf _espaliers_, full of delicious pears and
Reine Claudes (that queen of amber-tinted, crimson-freckled greengages),
its apricots, as fragrant as flowers, and its glorious, spice-breathing
carnations.

The mode of life and manners of these worthy people were not refined or
elegant, but essentially hospitable and kind; and I enjoyed the sunny
freedom of my holiday visits to them extremely. The marriage of their
daughter opened to me a second Parisian home of the same class, but with
greater pretensions to social advantages, derived from the great city in
the center of which it stood.

I was present at the celebration of Caroline A----'s marriage to one of
the head-masters of a first-class boarding-school for boys, of which he
subsequently became the principal director. It was in the Rue de Clichy,
and thither the bride departed, after a jolly, rollicking, noisy
wedding, beginning with the religious solemnization at church and
procession to the _mairie_ for due sanction of the civil authorities,
and ending with a bountiful, merry, early afternoon dinner, and the not
over-refined ancient custom of the distribution of the _jarretiere de la
mariee_. The jarretiere was a white satin ribbon, tied at a discreet
height above the bride's ankle, and removed thence by the best man and
cut into pieces, for which an animated scramble took place among the
male guests, each one who obtained a piece of the white favor
immediately fastening it in his button-hole. Doubtless, in earlier and
coarser times, it was the bride's real garter that was thus distributed,
and our elegant white and silver rosettes are the modern representatives
of this primitive wedding "favor," which is a relic of ages when both in
England and in France usages obtained at the noblest marriages which
would be tolerated by no class in either country now;

"When bluff King Hal the stocking threw,
And Katharine's hand the curtain drew."

I have a distinct recollection of the merry uproar caused by this
ceremony, and of the sad silence that fell upon the little