Every Frenchman in the middle or lower class believes himself capable of arriving at the highest honours. This belief sometimes half accomplishes the destiny it imagines; but even when it fails to effect this, it ever operates in rendering Frenchmen peculiarly liable to rush into any change or measure likely to lead to even a chance of distinction.
As during the performance of Avant, Pendant et Après, my eye glanced on the faces of some of the emigrant noblesse, restored to France by the entry of the Bourbons, I marked the changes produced on their countenances by it. Anxiety, mingled with dismay, was visible; for the scenes of the past were vividly recalled, while a vague dread of the future was instilled. Yes, the representation of this piece is a dangerous experiment, and so I fear it will turn out.
I am sometimes amused, but more frequently irritated, by observing the moeurs Parisiennes, particularly in the shop-keepers. The airs of self-complacency, amounting almost to impertinence, practised by this class, cannot fail to surprise persons accustomed to the civility and assiduity of those in London, who, whether the purchases made in their shops be large or small, evince an equal politeness to the buyers.
In Paris, the tradesman assumes the right of dictating to the taste of his customers; in London, he only administers to it. Enter a Parisian shop, and ask to be shewn velvet, silk, or riband, to assort with a pattern you have brought of some particular colour or quality, and the mercer, having glanced at it somewhat contemptuously, places before you six or eight pieces of a different tint and texture.
You tell him that they are not similar to the pattern, and he answers, "That may be; nevertheless, his goods are of the newest fashion, and infinitely superior to your model." You say, "You prefer the colour of your pattern, and must match it." He produces half-a-dozen pieces still more unlike what you require; and to your renewed assertion that no colour but the one similar to your pattern will suit you, he assures you, that his goods are superior to all others, and that what you require is out of fashion, and a very bad article, and, consequently, that you had much better abandon your taste and adopt his. This counsel is given without any attempt at concealing the contempt the giver of it entertains for your opinion, and the perfect satisfaction he indulges for his own.
You once more ask, "If he has got nothing to match the colour you require?" and he shrugs his shoulders and answers, "Pourtant, madame, what I have shewn you is much superior," "Very possible; but no colour will suit me but this one," holding up the pattern; "for I want to replace a breadth of a new dress to which an accident has occurred."
"Pourtant, madame, my colours are precisely the same, but the quality of the materials is infinitely better!" and with this answer, after having lost half an hour—if not double that time—you are compelled to be satisfied, and leave the shop, its owner looking as if he considered you a person of decidedly bad taste, and very troublesome into the bargain.
Similar treatment awaits you in every shop; the owners having, as it appears to me, decided on shewing you only what they approve, and not what you seek. The women of high rank in France seldom, if ever, enter any shop except that of Herbault, who is esteemed the modiste, par excellence, of Paris, and it is to this habit, probably, that the want of bienséance so visible in Parisian boutiquiers, is to be attributed.
CHAPTER IX.
An agreeable party dined here yesterday—Lord Stuart de Rothesay, our Ambassador, the Duc and Duchesse de Guiche, the Duc de Mouchy, Sir Francis Burdett, and Count Charles de Mornay. Lord Stuart de Rothesay is very popular at Paris, as is also our Ambassadress; a proof that, in addition to a vast fund of good-nature, no inconsiderable portion of tact is conjoined—to please English and French too, which they certainly do, requires no little degree of the rare talent of savoir-vivre.