"I rejoice to find that you allow so much, mon cher," replied his friend. "Yes, I think it might be worse; par exemple, if such gentry as those yonder were to have their way with us."
He looked towards three youths who were stalking up the walk before us with the air of being deeply intent on some business of dire import. They looked like walking caricatures—and in truth they were nothing else.
They were republicans. Similar figures are constantly seen strutting upon the Boulevards, or sauntering, like those before us, in the Tuileries, or hovering in sinister groups about the Bois de Boulogne, each one believing himself to bear the brow of a Brutus and the heart of a Cato. But see them where or when you will, they take good care to be unmistakable; there is not a child of ten years old in Paris who cannot tell a republican when he sees him. In several print-shops I have seen a key to their mystical toilet which may enable the ignorant to read them right. A hat, whose crown if raised for a few inches more would be conical, is highest in importance, as in place; and the shade of Cromwell may perhaps glory in seeing how many desperate wrongheads still mimic his beaver. Then come the long and matted locks, that hang in heavy ominous dirtiness beneath it. The throat is bare, at least from linen; but a plentiful and very disgusting profusion of hair supplies its place. The waistcoat, like the hat, bears an immortal name—"Gilet à la Robespierre" being its awful designation; and the extent of its wide-spreading lapels is held to be a criterion of the expansive principles of the wearer. Au reste, a general air of grim and savage blackguardism is all that is necessary to make up the outward man of a republican of Paris in 1835.
But, oh! the grimaces by which I have seen human face distorted by persons wearing this masquerading attire! Some roll their eyes and knit their brows as if they would bully the whole universe; others fix their dark glances on the ground in fearful meditation; while other some there be who, while gloomily leaning against a statue or a tree, throw such terrific meaning into their looks as might naturally be interpreted into the language of the witches in Macbeth—
"We must, we will—we must, we will
Have much more blood,—and become worse,
And become worse" ... &c. &c.
The three young men who had just passed us were exactly of this stamp. Our legitimate friend looked after them and laughed heartily.
"C'est à nous autres, mon cher," said de L——, "to enjoy that sight. You and yours would have but small reason to laugh at such as these, if it were not the business of us and ours to take care that they should do you no harm. You may thank the eighty thousand National Guards of Paris for the pleasure of quizzing with such a complacent feeling of security these very ferocious-looking persons."
"For that I thank them heartily," replied M. P——; "only I think the business would have been quite as well done if those who performed it had the right to do so."