COCKAYNES IN PARIS.




CHAPTER I.

MRS. ROWE'S.


The story I have to tell is disjointed. I throw it out as I picked it
up. My duties, the nature of which is neither here nor there, have
borne me to various parts of Europe. I am a man, not with an
establishment--but with two portmanteaus. I have two hats in Paris and
two in London always. I have seen everything in both cities, and like
Paris, on the whole, best. There are many reasons, it seems to me, why
an Englishman who has the tastes of a duke and the means of a half-pay
major, should prefer the banks of the Seine to those of the Thames--even
with the new Embankment. Everybody affects a distinct and deep
knowledge of Paris in these times; and most people do know how to get
the dearest dinner Bignon can supply for their money; and to secure the
apartments which are let by the people of the West whom nature has
provided with an infinitesimal quantity of conscience. But there are now
crowds of English men and women who know their Paris well; men who never
dine in the restaurant of the stranger, and women who are equal to a
controversy with a French cook. These sons and daughters of Albion who
have transplanted themselves to French soil, can show good and true
reasons why they prefer the French to the English life. The wearying
comparative estimates of household expenses in Westbournia, and