A Bundle of Letters | Page 8

must
confess that we breathe more freely than I expected, in this place,
where we have been for about a week. I was sure, before we came, that
it would prove to be an establishment of the LOWEST DESCRIPTION;
but I must say that, in this respect, I am agreeably disappointed. The
French are so clever that they know even how to manage a place of this
kind. Of course it is very disagreeable to live with strangers, but as,
after all, if I were not staying with Madame de Maisonrouge I should
not be living in the Faubourg St. Germain, I don't know that from the
point of view of exclusiveness it is any great loss to be here.
Our rooms are very prettily arranged, and the table is remarkably good.
Mamma thinks the whole thing--the place and the people, the manners
and customs--very amusing; but mamma is very easily amused. As for
me, you know, all that I ask is to be let alone, and not to have people's
society forced upon me. I have never wanted for society of my own
choosing, and, so long as I retain possession of my faculties, I don't
suppose I ever shall. As I said, however, the place is very well managed,
and I succeed in doing as I please, which, you know, is my most
cherished pursuit. Madame de Maisonrouge has a great deal of
tact--much more than poor father. She is what they call here a belle
femme, which means that she is a tall, ugly woman, with style. She
dresses very well, and has a great deal of talk; but, though she is a very

good imitation of a lady, I never see her behind the dinner-table, in the
evening, smiling and bowing, as the people come in, and looking all the
while at the dishes and the servants, without thinking of a dame de
comptoir blooming in a corner of a shop or a restaurant. I am sure that,
in spite of her fine name, she was once a dame de comptoir. I am also
sure that, in spite of her smiles and the pretty things she says to every
one, she hates us all, and would like to murder us. She is a hard, clever
Frenchwoman, who would like to amuse herself and enjoy her Paris,
and she must be bored to death at passing all her time in the midst of
stupid English people who mumble broken French at her. Some day she
will poison the soup or the vin rouge; but I hope that will not be until
after mother and I shall have left her. She has two daughters, who,
except that one is decidedly pretty, are meagre imitations of herself.
The "family," for the rest, consists altogether of our beloved
compatriots, and of still more beloved Englanders. There is an
Englishman here, with his sister, and they seem to be rather nice people.
He is remarkably handsome, but excessively affected and patronising,
especially to us Americans; and I hope to have a chance of biting his
head off before long. The sister is very pretty, and, apparently, very
nice; but, in costume, she is Britannia incarnate. There is a very
pleasant little Frenchman--when they are nice they are charming--and a
German doctor, a big blonde man, who looks like a great white bull;
and two Americans, besides mother and me. One of them is a young
man from Boston,--an aesthetic young man, who talks about its being
"a real Corot day," etc., and a young woman--a girl, a female, I don't
know what to call her--from Vermont, or Minnesota, or some such
place. This young woman is the most extraordinary specimen of artless
Yankeeism that I ever encountered; she is really too horrible. I have
been three times to Clementine about your underskirt, etc.

CHAPTER IV

FROM LOUIS LEVERETT, IN PARIS, TO HARVARD TREMONT,
IN BOSTON.
September 25th.

My dear Harvard--I have carried out my plan, of which I gave you a
hint in my last, and I only regret that I should not have done it before. It
is human nature, after all, that is the most interesting thing in the world,
and it only reveals itself to the truly earnest seeker. There is a want of
earnestness in that life of hotels and railroad trains, which so many of
our countrymen are content to lead in this strange Old World, and I was
distressed to find how far I, myself; had been led along the dusty,
beaten track. I had, however, constantly wanted to turn aside into more
unfrequented ways; to plunge beneath the surface and see what I should
discover. But the opportunity had always been missing; somehow, I
never meet those opportunities that we hear about and read