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"A louis," added Madame, "to obviate anything singular, on the other hand." "It is you who make me economical, under certain circumstances," said the King. "Do you remember the driver of the fiacre? I wanted to give him a LOUIS, and Duc d'Ayen said, 'You will be known; so that I gave him a crown." He was going to tell the whole story.
To the night-birds of the streets and the noisy fiacre drivers outside, and to the crowd of guests who stood on the high marble steps waiting for their turn to depart, he might have been relating an amusing anecdote of the ball just over. "I'm in great trouble, old man," was what he said. "I must see you alone to-night.
Jorrocks, and having dispatched Agamemnon for a fiacre, bundled him in, luggage and all, and desiring her worthy domestic to mount the box, and direct the driver, she kissed her hand to the Yorkshireman, assuring him she would be most happy to see him, in proof of which, she drove away without telling him her number, or where the Rue des Mauvais-Garçons was.
"No, no," he faintly interrupted, "not there. To Casa Guinigi. I must instantly see the marchesa," whispered Trenta in the count's ear. The fiacre containing the unhappy chamberlain drove from the door, and plunged into a dark street toward the cathedral. Count Marescotti stood for some minutes in the doorway, gazing after it.
It seems rather hopeless for this man and myself to continue arguing in different languages, so if you would not mind " When they were both in the fiacre she did not speak, but leaned back, her hands in her lap, her feet crossed, looking straight in front of her with hazel-green eyes, expressionless as those of the Sphinx. Count Poleski congratulated himself in silence over his discovery.
There was something in this speech that jarred upon Graham's sensitive pride; but on the whole, he felt relieved, both in honour and in heart. After a few more words, the two young men shook hands and parted. Alain remounted his horse. The day was now declining. Graham hailed a vacant fiacre, and directed the driver to Isaura's villa.
No one seemed to notice him at first a lad had already started in quest of a surgeon, and jumping into the empty fiacre that had brought the injured man to the hotel, was driving off; but Madelon turned round at the sound of Graham's voice, and looked up in his face with a new expression of hope in her eyes, instead of the blank, bewildered despair with which she had been gazing at her father and the strange faces around.
Listless and preoccupied in contemplation of his wretched case he wandered purposelessly half round the square, then dropped into a bench on its outskirts. It was some time later that he noticed, with a casual, indifferent eye, a porter running out of the Hotel de Flandre, directly opposite, and calling a fiacre in to the carriage block.
A stranger would not appreciate the degree of praise which is contained in the word quiet when used by the French, who appear to consider it as comprising all the cardinal virtues; when seeking a house or apartments, if you say any thing favourable or unfavourable of them, they never fail to remind you that they are so quiet. The same eulogy they will pronounce on their daughters with peculiar pride and energy, when they wish to extol them to the skies, and in good truth their demoiselles are quiet enough in all conscience, for it requires often a considerable degree of ingenuity to extract from them more than monosyllables. We have been accustomed to consider the French as a restless, capricious, volatile people, and so I suppose they might have been formerly, but now they are undoubtedly the reverse, being a quiet routine plodding sort of people, particularly as regards the provincials; and even amongst the Parisians there are thousands that reside in one quarter of the city, which they seldom quit, never approaching what they consider the gay portion of Paris, but live amongst each other, visiting only within their own circle, consisting almost entirely of their relations and family connexions. This feeling is certainly exemplified still farther at Boulogne, as I knew an old couple who lived in the upper town, which joins the lower town except by the separation of the wall of the fortifications, and had not been in the latter for five years, because they considered it was too bustling and too much a place of pleasure for such quiet, homely, and orderly folk as they professed to be and certainly were, in every sense of the word. At Bordeaux I knew three old ladies who were born in that city, and never had been in any other town during their whole lives, nor ever desired to pass the walls of their native place. Many persons who have been accustomed to spend their days in the provinces have a sort of horror of Paris; I remember an old gentleman at Rouen, who with his antiquated spouse lived a sort of Darby and Joan kind of life, their only daughter being married and living elsewhere; and on my once asking him if he had ever been to Paris, he replied that he was once so situated as to be compelled to go upon urgent business that rendered his presence indispensable, but that he saw very little of the place, because he had always heard that it was a city replete with vice and dissipation, and that during the few days his affairs compelled him to stay he kept close to his apartment, only quitting it to proceed to the house wherein he had to transact business, and then he went in a fiacre, as, if he had walked perhaps he might have been jostled, run over, robbed, or something unpleasant might have occurred. "Ah! that's very true, you did quite right, and acted very prudently, my dear," observed his wife, "and nobody knows the anxiety I felt till you came back again." Although the rising generation of the French is not quite so dormant in their ideas as that which is passing, yet there is not even with them the same spirit of travel and enterprise which exist in the English. That France has had, a reputation for restlessness, love of change, and tumult, can only be explained by stating that until the present time for the last two centuries, with the exception of Louis the Eighteenth, she has been most unfortunate in her rulers, who have been supporting a state of extravagant splendour which could alone be sustained by being wrung from the middle and the lower classes; hence the revolution in 1789, which might be considered as the ripened fruit which the preceding reigns had been nurturing. Of the affair of the three days in 1830, few I believe will deny the intensity of the provocation, but then it will be said how do you account for their having been so turbulent and discontented during the present reign? To which I should answer in the same manner as an officer, who, defending the character of his regiment, observed that it was composed of a thousand men, of which nine hundred and fifty were peaceable and quiet subjects, but the other fifty being very noisy they were constantly heard of, and his corps had obtained the appellation of the noisy regiment, as no one bestowed a thought upon the 'nine hundred and fifty men who were orderly' because no one ever heard of them: thus it may be said of France, the population may be estimated at about thirty-five millions, of which perhaps one million may be discontented, and amongst them are many persons connected with the press, who not only contrive by that means to extend their war-whoop to every corner of France, but as newspapers are conveyed to all the civilised parts of the world, and the only medium by which a country is judged by those who have not an opportunity of visiting it and making their own observations by a residence amongst the people, it naturally is inferred in England and in other nations that the French are a most dissatisfied and refractory people. But a case in point may be cited, which proves that the dissatisfaction is not general, nor has ever been during the present reign. From the time that Louis-Philippe accepted the throne in 1830, until June the 6th, 1832, a number of young men in the different colleges at Paris occupied themselves constantly with the affairs of the state, each forming a sort of political utopia, and however different were their various theories, they all united in one object, and that was to overthrow the existing government, and secretly took measures for arming themselves, and mustering what strength they could collect in point of numbers, which was but very insignificant compared to the importance of the blow they intended to strike; but they counted on the rising of the people, and the event proved they counted without their host. June the 6th, 1832, being the day appointed for the funeral of General Lamarque, they chose it for the development of their project, and although the misguided youths fought with skill, constancy and courage, even with a fanatic devotion to their cause, yet the populace took no part with them, and the National Guard were the first to fire upon them; and after two days hard fighting in the barricades they had raised, scarcely any remained who were not either killed or wounded. Since that, no attempt of the slightest importance has been made to overthrow the government, and in fact I have ever found that ninety-nine Parisians out of a hundred exclaim "Tranquillité
A posse of police went to arrest Ripaldi; the Countess returned to the Hotel Madagascar; and the Judge's party started for the Morgue, only a short journey, where they were presently received with every mark of respect and consideration. The keeper, or officer in charge, was summoned, and came out bareheaded to the fiacre, bowing low before his distinguished visitors.
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