The Cockaynes in Paris | Page 8

the party should be spent. So was it with the Cockaynes, an intensely British party.
"My dears," said Mr. Cockayne, "we must husband our time. To-day I propose we go, at eleven o'clock, to see the parade of the Guard in the Rue de Rivoli; from there (we shall be close at hand) we can see the Louvre; by two o'clock we will lunch in the Palais Royal. I think it's at five the band plays in the Tuileries gardens; after the band----"
"But, dear papa, we want to look at the shops!" interposes the gentle Sophonisba.
"The what, my dear? Here you are in the capital of the most polished nation on the face of the earth, surrounded by beautiful monuments that recall--that are, in fact----"
"Well!" firmly observes Sophonisba's determined mamma; "you, Mr. Cockayne, go, with your Murray's handbook, see all the antiquities, your Raphaels and Rubens, and amuse yourself among the cobwebs of the H?tel Cluny; we are not so clever--we poor women; and while you're rubbing your nose against the marbles in the Louvre, we'll go and see the shops."
"We don't mind the parade and the band, but we might have a peep at just a few of the shops near the hotel, before eleven," observes Sophonisba.
Cockayne throws up his eyes, and laments the frivolity of women. He is left with one daughter (who is a blue) to admire the proportions of the Madeleine, to pass a rapturous hour in the square room of the Louvre, and to examine St. Germain l'Auxerrois, while the frivolous part of his household goes stoutly away, light-hearted and gay as humming-birds, to have their first look at the shops.
[Illustration: A GROUP OF MARBLE "INSULAIRES." _So cold and natural they might be mistaken for life_.]
I happen to have seen the shops of many cities. I have peered into the quaint, small-windowed shops of Copenhagen; I have passed under the pendant tobacco leaves into the primitive cigar-shops of St. Sebastian; I have hobbled, in furs, into the shops of Stockholm; I have been compelled to take a look at the shops of London, Dublin, Edinburgh, Liverpool, and a host of other places; but perfect shopping is to be enjoyed in Paris only; and in the days gone by, the Palais Royal was the centre of this paradise. Alas! the days of its glory are gone. The lines of splendid boulevards, flanked with gorgeous shops and cafés; the long arcades of the Rue de Rivoli; and, in fine, the leaning of all that is fashionable, and lofty, and rich to the west, are the causes which have brought the destruction of the Palais Royal. Time was when that quaint old square--the Place-Royale in the Marais--was mighty fashionable. It now lies in the neglected, industrious, factory-crowded east--a kind of Parisian Bloomsbury Square, only infinitely more picturesque, with its quaint, low colonnades. You see the fine Parisians have travelled steadily westward, sloping slowly, like "the Great Orion." They are making their way along the Champs-Elysées to the Avenue de l'Impératrice; and are constructing white stone aristocratic suburbs.
So the foreigners no longer make their way direct to the Palais Royal now, on the morrow of their arrival in Paris. If they be at the Louvre, they bend westward along the Rue de Rivoli, and by the Rue de la Paix, to the brilliant boulevards. If they be in the Grand H?tel, they issue at once upon these famous boulevards, and the ladies are in a feminine paradise at once. Why, exactly opposite to the Grand H?tel is Rudolphi's remarkable shop, packed artistically with his works of art--ay, and of the most finished and cunning art--in oxidized silver. His shop is most admirably adapted to the articles the effect of which he desires to heighten. It is painted black and pointed with delicate gold threads. The rich array of jewellery and the rare ecclesiastical ornaments stand brightly out from the sombre case, and light the window. The precious stones, the lapis lazuli, the malachite, obtain a new brilliance from the rich neutral tints and shades of the chased dulled silver in which they are held.
Sophonisba, her mamma and sisters, are not at much trouble to decide the period to which the bracelet, or the brooch, or the earring belongs. "Cinque cento, my dear! I know nothing about that. I think it would suit my complexion."
"I confess to a more modern taste, Sophonisba. That is just the sort of thing your father would like. Now, do look at those--sphinxes, don't you call them--for a brooch. I think they're hideous. Did you ever see such ears? I own, that diamond dew-drop lying in an enamel rose leaf, which I saw, I think, in the Rue de la Paix, is more to my taste."
And so the ladies stroll westward to the famous Giroux (where