The Paris Sketch Book | Page 6

been conversing with him, in the course of the morning, in
French--which, he says, you speak remarkably well, like a native in fact,
and then in English (which, after all, you find is more convenient).
What can express your gratitude to this gentleman for all his goodness
towards your family and yourself-- you talk to him, he has served under
the Emperor, and is, for all that, sensible, modest, and well-informed.
He speaks, indeed, of his countrymen almost with contempt, and
readily admits the superiority of a Briton, on the seas and elsewhere.
One loves to meet with such genuine liberality in a foreigner, and
respects the man who can sacrifice vanity to truth. This distinguished
foreigner has travelled much; he asks whither you are going?--where
you stop? if you have a great quantity of luggage on board?--and laughs
when he hears of the twenty-seven packages, and hopes you have some
friend at the custom-house, who can spare you the monstrous trouble of
unpacking that which has taken you weeks to put up. Nine, ten, eleven,
the distinguished foreigner is ever at your side; you find him now,
perhaps, (with characteristic ingratitude,) something of a bore, but, at
least, he has been most tender to the children and their mamma. At last
a Boulogne light comes in sight, (you see it over the bows of the vessel,
when, having bobbed violently upwards, it sinks swiftly down,)
Boulogne harbor is in sight, and the foreigner says,--
The distinguished foreigner says, says he--"Sare, eef you af no 'otel, I
sall recommend you, milor, to ze 'Otel Betfort, in ze Quay, sare, close
to the bathing-machines and custom-ha-oose. Good bets and fine garten,
sare; table-d'hôte, sare, à cinq heures; breakfast, sare, in French or
English style;--I am the commissionaire, sare, and vill see to your
loggish."
. . . Curse the fellow, for an impudent, swindling, sneaking French
humbug!--Your tone instantly changes, and you tell him to go about his
business: but at twelve o'clock at night, when the voyage is over, and
the custom-house business done, knowing not whither to go, with a
wife and fourteen exhausted children, scarce able to stand, and longing
for bed, you find yourself, somehow, in the Hôtel Bedford (and you

can't be better), and smiling chambermaids carry off your children to
snug beds; while smart waiters produce for your honor--a cold fowl,
say, and a salad, and a bottle of Bordeaux and Seltzer-water.
. . . . . .
The morning comes--I don't know a pleasanter feeling than that of
waking with the sun shining on objects quite new, and (although you
have made the voyage a dozen times,) quite strange. Mrs. X. and you
occupy a very light bed, which has a tall canopy of red "percale;" the
windows are smartly draped with cheap gaudy calicoes and muslins;
there are little mean strips of carpet about the tiled floor of the room,
and yet all seems as gay and as comfortable as may be--the sun shines
brighter than you have seen it for a year, the sky is a thousand times
bluer, and what a cheery clatter of shrill quick French voices comes up
from the court-yard under the windows! Bells are jangling; a family,
mayhap, is going to Paris, en poste, and wondrous is the jabber of the
courier, the postilion, the inn-waiters, and the lookers-on. The landlord
calls out for "Quatre biftecks aux pommes pour le trente-trois,"--(O my
countrymen, I love your tastes and your ways!)--the chambermaid is
laughing and says, "Finissez donc, Monsieur Pierre!" (what can they be
about?)--a fat Englishman has opened his window violently, and says,
"Dee dong, garsong, vooly voo me donny lo sho, ou vooly voo pah?"
He has been ringing for half an hour--the last energetic appeal succeeds,
and shortly he is enabled to descend to the coffee-room, where, with
three hot rolls, grilled ham, cold fowl, and four boiled eggs, he makes
what he calls his first FRENCH breakfast.
It is a strange, mongrel, merry place, this town of Boulogne; the little
French fishermen's children are beautiful, and the little French soldiers,
four feet high, red-breeched, with huge pompons on their caps, and
brown faces, and clear sharp eyes, look, for all their littleness, far more
military and more intelligent than the heavy louts one has seen
swaggering about the garrison towns in England. Yonder go a crowd of
bare-legged fishermen; there is the town idiot, mocking a woman who
is screaming "Fleuve du Tage," at an inn-window, to a harp, and there
are the little gamins mocking HIM. Lo! these seven young ladies, with
red hair and green veils, they are from neighboring Albion, and going
to bathe. Here comes three Englishmen, habitués evidently of the
place,--dandy specimens of our countrymen: one wears a marine dress,

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