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The wide mouth of the present Boulevard Saint-Michel, a short way round the corner, had not yet been forced open to the exhibition of more or less glittering fangs; old Paris still pressed round the Palace and its gardens, which formed the right, the sober social antithesis to the "elegant" Tuileries, and which in fine, with these renewals of our young confidence, reinforced both in a general and in a particular way one of the fondest of our literary curiosities of that time, the conscientious study of Les Français Peints par Eux-Mêmes, rich in wood-cuts of Gavarni, of Grandville, of Henri-Monnier, which we held it rather our duty to admire and W. J. even a little his opportunity to copy in pen-and-ink.
For instance, in "Les Francais peints par eux-memes," edited by Cunmer, the notary, as described by Balzac, has a flat, expressionless face and wears a mask of bland silliness; and in "Pamela Giraud" one of the characters remarks, "A lawyer who talks to himself that reminds me of a pastrycook who eats his own cakes."
No witches would run after me when I was sowing my hempseed this year; my nuts blazed away together very comfortably to the end of their lives, and when mamma put hers in which were meant for herself and papa they blazed away in the like manner. Before he was ten he could write, with a really irritating precocity, that he had been 'making some pictures from a book called "Les Francais peints par euxmemes." . . . It is full of pictures of all classes, with a description of each in French.
Ce présent consistoit en soixante-dix grands plateaux d'etain chargés de différentes sortes de confitures et de compotes, et vingt-huit autres dont chacun portoit un mouton écorché. Les moutons étoient peints en blanc et en rouge, et tous avoient un anneau d'argent suspendu au nez et deux autres aux oreilles.
Before he was ten he could write, with a really irritating precocity, that he had been "making some pictures from a book called 'Les Français peints par eux-mêmes. ... It is full of pictures of all classes, with a description of each in French. The pictures are a little caricatured, but not much." Doubtless this was only an echo from his mother, but it shows the atmosphere in which he breathed.
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