Miscellanea.
Though the "Flora" round about Vichy be, as we have said it is, very rich and various, it attracts no attention. The fat Bœotian cattle that feed upon it, look upon and ruminate with more complacency over it than the ordinary visitors of the place. The only flowers the ladies cultivate an acquaintance with, are those manufactured in Paris; artificial passion flowers, and false "forget-me-nots," which are about as true to nature as they that wear them. Of fruits every body is a judge; and those of a sub-acid kind—the only ones permitted by the doctors to the patients—are in great request. Foremost amongst them, after the month of June, are to be reckoned the dainty fresh-dried fruits from Clermont; of which, again, the prepared pulp of the mealy wild apricot of the district is the best. This pâté d'abricot is justly considered by the French one of the best friandises they have, and is not only sold in every department there, but finds its way to England also. Eaten, as we ate it, fresh from Clermont twice a-week, it is soft and pulpy; but soon becoming candied, loses much of its fruity flavour, and is converted into a sweetmeat.
We should not, in speaking of Vichy to a friend, ever designate it as a comfortable resort for a family; which, according to our English notion of the thing, implies both privacy and detachment. Here you can have neither. You must consider yourself as so much public property, must do what others do—i. e. live in public, and make the best of it. No place can be better off for hotels, and few so ill off for lodgings—the latter are only to be had in small dingy houses opening upon the street. They are, of course, very noisy; nor are the let-ters of them at any pains to induce you by the modesty of their demands to drop a veil over this defect. Defect, quotha! say, rather misery, plague, torture. Can any word be an over-exaggeration for an incessant tintamare, of which dogs, ducks, and drums are the leading instruments, enough to try the most patient ears? The hotels begin to receive candidates for the waters in May; but the season is reputed not to commence till a month later, and ends with September. During this period, many thousand visitors, including some of the ministers of the day; a royal duke; half the Institute; poets, a few; hommes des lettres, many; agents de change, most of all; deputies, wits, and dandies; in fact, all the élite, both of Paris and of the provinces, pay the same sum of seven francs per man, per diem; and, with the exception of the duke, assemble, not to say fraternize, at the same table. But though the guests be not formal, the "Mall," where every body walks, is extremely so. A very broad right-angled
intersected by broad staring paths, cut across by others into smaller squares, compels you either to be for ever throwing off at right angles to your course, or to turn out of the enclosure. When the proclamation for the opening of the season has been tamboured through the streets—with the doctors rests the announcement of the day—immediately orders are issued for clean shaving the grass-plats, lopping off redundant branches, to recall the growth of trees to sound orthopedic principles, and to reduce that wilderness of impertinent forms, wherewith nature has disfigured her own productions, into the figures of pure geometry! Hither, into this out-of-doors drawing-room, at the fashionable hour of four P.M., are poured out, from the embouchures of all the hotels, all the inhabitants of them; all the tailor's gentlemen of the Boulevard des Italiens, and all the modisterie of the Tuileries.