"And pray what's that, Sophy?" Mrs. Cockayne asked. "What grand occasion, I should like to know."
"Dear me, mamma," Theodosia murmured, "it means an excellent opportunity."
"My dear," Mrs. Cockayne retorted severely to her child, "I didn't have the advantage of lessons in French, at I don't know how many guineas a quarter; nor, I believe, did your father; nor did we have occasion to teach ourselves, like Miss Sharp."
"Well, look here, mamma," Miss Sophonisba said, her eyes sparkling and her fingers trembling as they ran down line after line of the advertisement that covered the whole back sheet of the newspaper. "You never saw such bargains. The prices are positively ridiculous. There are silks, and laces, and muslins, and grenadines, and alpacas, and shawls, and cloaks, and plain sultanes, and I don't know what, all at such absurdly low prices that I think there must be some mistake about it."
"Tut," Mr. Cockayne said; "one of those 'awful sacrifices' and bankrupt stock sales, like those we see in London, and the bills of which are thrown into the letter-box day after day."
"You are quite mistaken, papa dear, indeed you are," Theodosia said; "we have asked the person in the Bureau down stairs, and she has told us that these 'Grandes Occasions' take place twice regularly every year, and that people wait for them to make good bargains for their summer things and for their winter things."
The lady in the Bureau was right. The prudent housewives of Paris take advantage of these "Grandes Occasions" to make their summer and winter purchases for the family. In the spring-time, when the great violet trade of Paris brightens the corners of the streets, immense advertisements appear in all the daily and weekly papers of Paris, headed by gigantic letters that the fleetest runner may read, announcing extraordinary exhibitions, great exhibitions, and unprecedented spring shows. "Poor Jacques" offers 3000 cashmere shawls at twenty-seven francs each, 2000 silk dresses at twenty-nine francs, and 1000 at thirty-nine francs. "Little Saint Thomas," of the Rue du Bac, has 90,000 French linos, 1000 "Jacquettes gentleman," 500 Zouaves, and 1000 dozen cravats—all at extraordinary low prices. Poor Jacques draws public attention to the "incomparable cheapness" of his immense operations: while Little St. Thomas declares that his assortment of goods is of "exceptional importance," and that he is selling his goods at a cheapness hors ligne. For a nation that has twitted the English with being a race of shop-keepers, our friends the Parisians who keep shops are not wanting in devotion to their own commercial interests. Indeed, there is a strong commercial sense in thousands of Parisians who have no shutters to take down. Take for instance the poetical M. Alphonse Karr, whose name has passed all over Europe as the charming author of A Journey round my Garden. Nothing can be more engaging than the manner in which M. Karr leads his readers about with him among his flowers and the parasites of his garden. He falls into raptures over the petals of the rose, and his eye brightens tenderly over the June fly. One would think that this garden-traveller was a very ethereal personage, and that milk and honey and a few sweet roots would satisfy his simple wants, and that he had no more idea of trafficking in a market than a hard man of business has in spending hours watching a beetle upon a leaf. But let not the reader continue to labour under this grievous mistake.
M. Karr is quite up to the market value of every bud that breaks within the charmed circle of his garden at Nice.
He cultivates the poetry for his books, but he does not neglect his ledger. In the spring, when, according to Mr. Tennyson, "a fuller crimson comes upon the robin's breast," and "young men's fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love," M. Alphonse Karr, poet and florist, opens his flower-shop.
Carrie had taken up the newspaper which had moved the enthusiasm of her elder sisters. Her eyes fell on the following advertisement:—