When you live that feverish Parisian life, that consumes you by overtaxing your intellectual powers, what a treat it is to go and see the old folks, in the old house that is standing there just as you remember it in your childhood! Every room, every piece of furniture, is linked in your memory with some event of bygone days. How you revive in that old place!
In the thickest darkness you could find everything. Your dear old mother is there in her chair by the window, in her favorite place, which has not altered so much as an inch. The old servant, who danced you on her knee, watches at the door for the first glimpse of the carriage that brings you. And the cries of joy, and the clapping of hands! What welcome awaits you! Everyone speaks at the same time, you are taken by storm, nobody thinks of checking his delight (in France, joy is allowed free outlet). You go up to the room that used to be yours to shake off the dust of your journey. Nothing is altered, everything is there, just where it always was in the old days; you feel as if you had grown twenty years younger. You go down, and in the dining room you see the large fireplace that has undergone no stupid modernizing. Will you ever forget the bloodcurdling ghost stories that you listened to so breathlessly in the twilight, as you roasted chestnuts in the embers? What shivers of horror would run through you as you nestled close up in that chimney corner! And so all the past revives again: the April walks in quest of dewy primroses, the scamper over the daisy-strewn fields in the glorious summer sunshine; the clandestine raids on the pear trees, and the scoldings from mother, who was sure to read the history of the afternoon in the meek faces and torn raiment.
The Frenchman of the provinces wraps himself up in his family, almost to the exclusion of the outer world. In the streets he salutes his acquaintances with a profound bow; on New Year's Day he pays them a visit of ceremony, offers the ladies a packet of marrons glacés, or a couple of oranges; but his hospitable table is only open to his children, who, as long as he lives, are at home in the house. One or two intimate friends at most are allowed to penetrate freely into the little circle; the time is killed, even killed by inches, A garden, chickens, ducks, the Saturday pot-au-feu, such is the extent of his ambition. All this luxury can be obtained for about a hundred dollars a month. When his three per cent. rentes secure him this sum, he retires from business, and gives his younger fellow-creatures a chance.
His family being generally small, he has all his dear ones around him, under his roof.
He idolizes children, and makes the most charming father in the world.
To give a good education to his sons, and a good dot to his daughters, to see them happily married, and keep them near him after their marriage, to bring up his grandchildren, guide their first tottering steps, make companions of them, launch them in life, and see them all assembled around his death-bed, such is the life of the good Joseph Prudhomme.
CHAPTER VI.
ENTERTAINING NEIGHBORS.
To an impartial observer, who goes on his way philosophizing, and keeping his eyes open to what passes on either side of the English Channel, it is really a very amusing sight to see how the two countries seem to make it their aim, each to do the contrary of what the other does.