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A man who talks of, or even hints at, his 'bonnes fortunes', is seldom believed, or, if believed, much blamed; whereas a man who conceals with care is often supposed to have more than he has, and his reputation of discretion gets him others.

Therefore one's earlier things must inevitably contain a mass of rot. And with what one sees, on one side, with its tongue in its cheek, defying one to be real enough, and on the other the bonnes gens rolling up their eyes at one's cynicism, the situation has elements of the ludicrous which the poor reproducer himself is doubtless in a position to appreciate better than any one else.

He had at the same time, and for a certain interest, advanced Madame d'Estainville money to establish her famous, or rather infamous, house in the Rue de Bonnes Enfants, near the Palais Royal, a house that soon became the fashionable resort of our friends of Liberty and Equality.

Her sympathetic nature showed itself in this as in other things; she was always sending bonnes bouches to her friends, and trying to communicate to them her science and taste in the affairs of the table. Madame de Longueville, who had not the luxurious tendencies of her friend, writes: “Je vous demande au nom de Dieu, que vous ne me prépariez aucun ragoût. Surtout ne me donnez point de festin.

Father Joseph, who listened with equal impatience to his master when he spoke of his 'bonnes fortunes' or of his verses, made, however, a grimace which he meant to be very sly and insinuating, but which was simply ugly and awkward; he fancied that the expression of his mouth, twisted about like a monkey's, conveyed, "Ah! who can resist your Eminence?"

Not much baggage could be carried, so as not to burden too heavily the three or four "bonnes," as they call the long, light, flat-bottomed boats peculiar to lumbermen, which had been all winter awaiting the time when their services would be required.

Not only had he studied much and observed much, but he had travelled in every part of Germany, Russia, Persia, and Turkey, whence he had gathered many a traditionary secret; and as he knew chemistry he became a living volume of those wonderful recipes scattered among the wise women, or, as the French call them, the bonnes femmes, of every land to which his feet had gone, following his father, a perambulating trader.

When she married my brother I don't suppose she took him for a member of a societe de bonnes oeuvres. I don't say we're right; who IS right? But we are as history has made us, and if any one's to change it had better be our charming, but not accommodating, friend." Again Madame Clairin paused, again she opened and closed her great modern fan, which clattered like the screen of a shop-window.

"How young I am, and how young the world is!" She let her eyes fall from the sky and plunge into the turmoil of the station, turmoil of people getting in and out of trains, of porters running with luggage, of restaurant employés wheeling stands of food through the crowd, piled oranges and mandarines, and white grapes, decorated with leaves and a few flowers; soldiers arriving or saying goodbye, jolly dark youths in red and blue; an Arab trying to sell scarfs from Algiers; a Turkish family travelling; English men and women newly landed, with P. & O. labels large on their hand-bags; French bonnes wearing quaint stiff caps and large floating ribbons; Indian ayahs wrapped in shawls.

Passing from thence up the picturesque Rue de Seine, let us walk to the Luxembourg, where bonnes, students, grisettes, and old gentlemen with pigtails, love to wander in the melancholy, quaint old gardens; where the peers have a new and comfortable court of justice, to judge all the emeutes which are to take place; and where, as everybody knows, is the picture-gallery of modern French artists, whom government thinks worthy of patronage.