At this restaurant, as everywhere else in Paris, we found it easy enough to class our gens. I feel quite sure that we had around us many of the employés du gouvernement actuel—several anciens militaires of Napoleon's—some specimens of the race distinguished by Louis Dix-huit and Charles Dix—and even, if I do not greatly mistake, a few relics of the Convention, and of the unfortunate monarch who was its victim.
But during this hour of rest and enjoyment all differences seem forgotten; and however discordant may be their feelings, two Frenchmen cannot be seated near each other at table, without exchanging numberless civilities, and at last entering into conversation, so well sustained and so animated, that instead of taking them for strangers who had never met before, we, in our stately shyness, would be ready to pronounce that they must be familiar friends.
Whether it be this causant, social temper which makes them prefer thus living in public, or that thus living in public makes them social, I cannot determine to my own satisfaction; but the one is not more remarkable and more totally unlike our own manners than the other, and I really think that no one who has not dined thus in Paris can have any idea how very wide, in some directions, the line of demarcation is between the two countries.
I have on former occasions dined with a party at places of much higher price, where the object was to observe what a very good dinner a very good cook could produce in Paris. But this experiment offered nothing to our observation at all approaching in interest and nationality to the dinner of quarante sous.
In the first place, you are much more likely to meet English than French society at these costly repasts; and in the second, if you do encounter at them a genuine native gourmet of la Grande Nation, he will, upon this occasion, be only doing like ourselves,—that is to say, giving himself un repas exquis, instead of regaling himself at home with his family—
"Sur un lièvre flanqué de deux poulets étiques."
But at the humble restaurant of two francs, you have again a new page of Paris existence to study,—and one which, while it will probably increase your English relish for your English home, will show you no unprofitable picture of the amiable social qualities of France. I think that if we could find a people composed in equal proportions of the two natures, they would be as near to social perfection as it is possible to imagine.
The French are almost too amiable to every one they chance to sit near. The lively smile, the kind empressement, the ready causerie, would be more flattering did we not know that it was all equally at the service of the whole world. Whereas we are more than equally wrong in the other extreme; having the air of suspecting that every human being who happens to be thrown into contact with us, before we know his birth, parentage, and education, is something very dangerous, and to be guarded against with all possible care and precaution. Query—Do not the Germans furnish something very like this juste milieu?
Having concluded our unexpensive repast with the prescribed tasse de café noir, we again sallied forth to take the tour of the Palais Royal, in order to occupy the time till the opening of the Théâtre du Vaudeville, with which, as we were so very close to it, we determined to finish the evening.
We returned, as we came, through the noble Galerie d'Orléans, which was now crowded with the assembled loungers of all the numerous restaurans. It is a gay and animated scene at any time of the day; but at this particular hour, just before the theatres open, and just after the gay people have all refreshed their animal spirits, Paris itself seems typified by the aspect of the lively, laughing, idle throng assembled there.