“Are you one of the new servants?” she asked, as a strange man answered her summons.
“No, Madame. I am in your employment, but no servant. Since the Republic, there are no servants. Address me, please, as ‘citizen!’ ”
And she was compelled to do it, or go without service. The man considered himself the equal of his mistress in all particulars, and would be counted nothing less.
Fuel is very costly in France, and consequently very little used. In Paris the climate is mild, and very little is needed. But the same economy is observed in this as in everything. Twigs of trees and the smallest bushes, cut in uniform lengths, are used for firing, and for cooking the use of charcoal is almost universal.
As the shops furnish food as cheaply as it can be prepared at home, it is only in families that cooking is done. The washing among this class is done altogether at the public wash-houses in the Seine. These are immense boats anchored close to the bank and partitioned off into spaces just wide enough for a woman to work comfortably. For two sous, the woman has the use of tubs and hot and cold water ad libitum. She takes her bundle of soiled goods, and her own soap, and washes them, using a heavy wooden paddle to drive the soap through the fabric, instead of the pounder and washboard, and, wringing them out, carries them home wet. A few sous’ worth of charcoal suffices to iron them, and the same fire cooks her little dinner, and so two very important birds are killed with one stone. The shop girls, whose attics will not admit of a fire, have no other way of washing their clothes, and so the public wash-houses are always full.
The eating of the day commences with a very slight breakfast in your room at any hour you choose. The said breakfast consists of exactly one cup of coffee or chocolate—it is measured accurately, there is exactly one cup in the little pot—two rolls and an infinitesimal portion of fresh butter. You bid good-bye to salted butter when you leave the steamer. On this you exist till twelve, or thereabouts, when you have a breakfast as is a breakfast. There are eggs and one or two varieties of meat, and wine ad libitum, ending with sweets. This over, at six you have the meal of the day, the dinner, consisting of five or six courses, commencing with the everlasting soup, and ending with black coffee. Wine constitutes the drink of this meal, as at the breakfast.
