"It is to his wife M. Moutonnet addresses himself. She tried to assume an amiable look, and condescends to approach her glass to that of M. Eustache Moutonnet. M. Eustache Moutonnet is a rich laceman of the Rue St Martin; a man highly respected in trade; no bill of his was ever protested, nor any engagement failed in. For the thirty years he has kept shop he has been steadily at work from eight in the morning till eight at night. His department is to take care of the day-book and ledger; Madame Moutonnet manages the correspondence and makes the bargains. The business of the shop and the accounts are confided to an old clerk and Mademoiselle Eugenie Moutonnet, with whom we shall presently become better acquainted.
"M. Moutonnet, as you may perhaps already have perceived, is not commander-in-chief at hone. His wife directs, rules, and governs all things. When she is in good-humour—a somewhat extraordinary occurrence—she allows her husband to go and take his little cup of coffee, provided he goes for that purpose to the coffee-house at the corner of the Rue Mauconseil—for it is famous for its liberal allowance of sugar, and M. Moutonnet always brings home three lumps of it to his wife. On Sundays they dine a little earlier, to have time for a promenade to the Tuileries or the Jardin Turk. Excursions into the country are very rare, and only on extraordinary occasions, such as the fête-day of M. and Madame Moutonnet. That regular life does not hinder the stout lace-merchant from being the happiest of men—so true is it that what is one man's poison is another man's meat. M. Moutonnet was born with simple tastes—she required to be led and managed like a child. Don't shrug your shoulders at this avowal, ye spirited gentlemen, so proud of your rights, so puffed up with your merits. You! who think yourselves always masters of your actions, you yield to your passions every day! they lead you, and sometimes lead you very ill. Well, M. Moutonnet has no fear of that—he has no passions—he knows nothing but his trade, and obedience to his spouse. He finds that a man can be very happy, though he does not know how to carve a turkey, and lets himself be governed by his wife. Madame Moutonnet is long past forty, but it is a settled affair that she is never to be more than thirty-six. She never was handsome, but she is large and tall, and her husband is persuaded she is superb. She is not a coquette, but she thinks herself superior to every body else in talents and beauty. She never cared a rush about her husband, but if he was untrue to her she would tear his eyes out. Madame Moutonnet, you perceive, is excessively jealous of her rights. A daughter is the sole issue of the marriage of M. Eustache Moutonnet and Mademoiselle Barbe Desormeaux. She is now eighteen years old, and at eighteen the young ladies in Paris are generally pretty far advanced. But Eugenie has been educated severely—and although possessed of a good deal of spirit, is timid, docile, submissive, and never ventures on a single observation in presence of her parents. She has cleverness, grace, and sensibility, but she is ignorant of the advantages she has received from nature—her sentiments are as yet concentrated at the bottom of her heart. She is not coquettish—or rather she scarcely ventures to give way to the inclination so natural to women, which leads them to please and to be pretty. But Eugenie has no need of those little arts, so indispensable to others, or to have recourse to her mirror every hour. She is well made, and she is beautiful; her eyes are soft and expressive, her voice is tender and agreeable, her brow is shadowed by dark locks of hair, her mouth furnished with fine white teeth. In short, she has that nameless something about her, which charms at first sight, which is not always possessed by greater beauties and more regular features. We now know all the Moutonnet family; and since we have gone so far, let us make acquaintance with the rest of the party who have come to the wood of Romainville to celebrate the Saint Eustache.
"The little woman who rushed so vigorously to the assistance of M. Moutonnet, is the wife of a tall gentleman of the name of Bernard, who is a toyman in the Rue St Denis. M. Bernard plays the amiable and the fool at the same time. He laughs and quizzes, makes jokes, and even puns; he is the wit of the party. His wife has been rather good-looking, and wishes to be so still. She squeezes in her waist till she can hardly breathe, and takes an hour to fit her shoes on—for she is determined to have a small foot. Her face is a little too red; but her eyes are very lively, and she is constantly trying to give them as mischievous an expression as she can. Madame Bernard has a great girl of fifteen, whom she dresses as if she were five, and treats occasionally to a new doll, by way of keeping her a child. By the side of Madame Bernard is seated a young man of eighteen, who is almost as timid as Eugenie, and blushes when he is spoken to, though he has stood behind a counter for six months. He is the son of a friend of M. Bernard, and his wife has undertaken to patronize him, and introduce him to good society.
"A person of about forty years of age, with one of those silly countenances which there is no mistaking at the first glance, is seated beside Eugenie. M. Dupont—such is his name—is a rich grocer of the Rue aux Ours. He wears powder and a queue, because he fancies they are becoming, and his hairdresser has told him that they are very aristocratic. His coat of sky-blue, and his jonquil-coloured waistcoat, give him still more the appearance of a simpleton, and agree admirably with the astonished expression of his gooseberry eyes. He dangles two watch-chains, that hang down his nankeen trowsers, with great satisfaction, and seems struck with admiration at the wisdom of his own remarks. He thinks himself captivating and full of wit. He has the presumption of ignorance, propped up by money. Finally, he is a bachelor, which gives him great consideration in all the families where there are marriageable daughters. M. and Madame Gerard, perfumers in the Rue St Martin, are also of the party. The perfumer enacts the gallant gay Lothario, and in his own district has the reputation of a prodigious rake, though he is ugly, and ill-made, and squints. But he fancies he overcomes all these drawbacks by covering himself with odours and perfumes—accordingly, you smell him half an hour before he comes in sight. His wife is young and pretty. She married him at fifteen, and has a boy of nine, who looks more like her brother than her son. The little Gerard hollos and jumps about, breaks the glasses and bottles, and makes as much noise as all the rest of the company put together. 'He's a little lion,' exclaims M. Gerard; 'he's exactly what I was. You never could hear yourselves speak wherever I was, at his age. People were delighted with me. My son is my perfect image.'
"M. Gerard's sister, an old maid of forty-five, who takes every opportunity of declaring that she never intends to marry, and sighs every tine M. Dupont looks at her, is next to M. Moutonnet. The old clerk of the laceman—M. Bidois—who waits for Madame Moutonnet's permission before he opens his mouth, and fills his glass every time she is not looking—is placed at the side of Mademoiselle Cecile Gerard; who, though she swears every minute that she never will marry, and that she hates the men, is very ill pleased to have old M. Bidois for her neighbour, and hints pretty audibly that Madame Bernard monopolizes all the young beaux. A young man of about twenty, tall, well-made, with handsome features, whose intelligent expression announces that he is intended for higher things than perpetually to be measuring yards of calico, is seated at the right hand of Eugenie. That young man, whose name is Adolphe, is assistant in a fashionable warehouse where Madame Moutonnet deals; and as he always gives good measure, she has asked him to the fête of St Eustache. And now we are acquainted with all the party who are celebrating the marriage-day of M. Moutonnet."
We are not going to follow Paul de Kock in the adventures of all the party so carefully described to us. Our object in translating the foregoing passage, was to enable our readers to see the manner of people who indulge in pic-nics in the wood of Romainville, desiring them to compare M. Moutonnet and his friends, with any laceman and his friends he may choose to fix upon in London. A laceman as well to do in the world as M. Moutonnet, a grocer as rich as M. Dupont, and even a perfumer as fashionable as M. Gerard, would have a whitebait dinner at Blackwall, or make up a party to the races at Epsom—and as to admitting such a humble servitor as M. Bidois to their society, or even the unfriended young mercer's assistant, M. Adolphe, they would as soon think of inviting one of the new police. Five miles from town our three friends would pass themselves off for lords, and blow-up the waiter for not making haste with their brandy and water, in the most aristocratic manner imaginable. In France, or at least in Paul de Kock, there seems no straining after appearances. The laceman continues a laceman when he is miles away from the little back shop; and even the laceman's lady has no desire to be mistaken for the wife of a squire. Madame Moutonnet seems totally unconscious of the existence of any lady whatever, superior to herself in rank or station. The Red Book is to her a sealed volume. Her envies, hatreds, friendships, rivalries, and ambitions, are all limited to her own circle. The wife of a rich laceman, on the other hand, in England, most religiously despises the wives of almost all other tradesmen; she scarcely knows in what street the shop is situated, but from the altitudes of Balham or Hampstead, looks down with supreme disdain on the toiling creatures who stand all day behind a counter. The husband, in the same way, manages to cast off every reminiscence of the shop, in the course of his three miles in the omnibus, and at six or seven o'clock you might fancy they were a duke and duchess, sitting in a gaudily furnished drawing-room, listening to two elegant young ladies torturing a piano, and another still more elegant young lady severely flogging a harp. The effect of this, so far as our English Paul de Kocks are concerned, is, that their linen-drapers, and lacemen, and rich perfumers, are represented assuming a character that does not belong to them, and aping people whom they falsely suppose to be their betters; whereas the genuine Paul paints the Parisian tradesmen without any affectation at all. Ours are made laughable by the common farcical attributes of all pretensions, great or small; while real unsophisticated shopkeeping (French) nature is the staple of Paul's character-sketches, and they are more valuable, and in the end more interesting, accordingly. Who cares for the exaggerated efforts of a Manchester warehouseman to be polished and gentlemanly? It is only acting after all, and gives us no insight into his real character, or the character of his class, any more than Mr Coates' anxiety to be Romeo enlightened us as to his disposition in other respects. The Manchester warehouseman, though he fails in his attempt at fashionable parts, may be a very estimable and pains-taking individual, and, with the single exception of that foible, offers nothing to the most careful observer to distinguish him from the stupid and respectable in any part of the world. And in this respect, any one starting as the chronicler of citizen life among us, would labour under a great disadvantage. Whether our people are phlegmatic, or stupid, or sensible—all three of which epithets are generally applicable to the same individual—or that they have no opportunities of showing their peculiarities from the domestic habits of the animal—it is certain that, however better they may be qualified for the business of life than their neighbours, they are far less fitted for the pages of a book. And the proof of it is this, that wherever any of our novelists has introduced a tradesman, he has either been an invention altogether, or a caricature. Even Bailie Nicol Jarvie never lived in the Saut Market in half such true flesh and blood as he does in Rob Roy. At all events, the inimitable Bailie is known to the universe at large by the additions made to his real character by the prodigal hand of his biographer, and the ridiculous contrasts in which he is placed with the caterans and reivers of the hills. In the city of Glasgow he was looked upon, and justly, as an honour to the gude town—consulted on all difficult matters, and famous for his knowledge of the world and his natural sagacity. Would this have been a fit subject for description? or is it just to think of the respectable Bailie in the ridiculous point of view in which he is presented to us in the Highlands? How would Sir Peter Laurie look if he had been taken long ago by Algerine pirates, and torn, with all his civic honours thick upon him, from the magisterial chair, and made hairdresser to the ladies of the harem—threatened with the bastinado for awkwardness in combing, as he now commits other unfortunate fellows to the treadmill for crimes scarcely more enormous? Paul de Kock derives none of his interest from odd juxtapositions. He knows nothing about caves and prisons and brigands—but he knows every corner of coffee-houses, and beer-shops, and ball-rooms. And these ball-rooms give him the command of another set of characters, totally unknown to the English world of fiction, because non-existent in England. With us, no shop-boy or apprentice would take his sweetheart to a public hop at any of the licenced music-houses. No decent girl would go there, nor even any girl that wished to keep up the appearance of decency. No flirtations, to end in matrimony, take their rise between an embryo boot-maker and a barber's daughter, in the course of the chaine Anglaise beneath the trees of the Green Park, or even at the Yorkshire Stingo. Fathers have flinty hearts, and the above-mentioned barber would probably increase the beauty of his daughter's "bonny black eye," by giving her another, if she talked of going to a ball, whether in a room or the open air. The Puritans have left their mark. Dancing is always sinful, and Satan is perpetual M.C. But let us follow the barber, or rather hairdresser—for the mere gleaner of beards is not intended by the name—into his own amusements. In Paul de Kock he goes to a coffee-house, drinks a small cup of coffee, and pockets the entire sugar; or to a ball, where he performs all the offices of a court chamberlain, and captivates all hearts by his graceful deportment. His wife, perhaps, goes with him, and flirts in a very business-like manner with a tobacconist; and his daughter is whirled about in a waltz by Eugene or Adolphe, the young confectioner, with as much elegance and decorum as if they were a young marquis and his bride in the dancing hall at Devonshire House. Our English friend goes to enjoy a pipe, or, if he has lofty notions, a cigar, and gin and water, at the neighbouring inn. Or when he determines on having a night of real rational enjoyment, he goes to some tavern where singing is the order of the evening. A stout man in the chair knocks on the table, and being the landlord, makes disinterested enquiries if every gentleman has a bumper. He then calls on himself for a song, and states that he is to be accompanied on the piano by a distinguished performer; whereupon, a tall young man of a moribund expression of countenance, and with his hair closely pomatumed over his head, rises, and, after a low bow, seats himself at the instrument. The stout man sings, the young man plays, and thunders of applause, and various fresh orders for kidneys and strong ale, and welch rabbits and cold-without, reward their exertions. Drinking goes on for some time, and waiters keep flying about with dishes of all kinds, and the hairdresser becomes communicative to his next neighbour, a butcher from Whitechapel, and they exchange their sentiments about kidneys and music in general, and the kidneys and music now offered to them in particular. In a few minutes, a gentleman with a strange obliquity in his vision, seated in the middle of the coffee-room, takes off his hat, and after a thump on the table from the landlord's hammer, commences a song so intensely comic, that when it is over, the orders for supper and drink are almost unanimous. The house is now full, the theatres have discharged their hungry audiences, and a distinguished guinea-a-week performer seats himself in the very next box to the hairdresser. That worthy gentleman by this time is stuffed so full of kidneys, and has drank so many glasses of brandy and water, that he can scarcely understand the explanations of the Whitechapel butcher, who has a great turn for theatricals, and wishes to treat the dramatic performer to a tumbler of gin-twist. Another knock on the table produces a momentary silence, and a little man starts off with an extempore song, where the conviviality of the landlord, and the goodness of his suppers, are duly chronicled. The hairdresser hears a confused buzz of admiration, and even attempts to join in it, but thinks it, at last, time to go. He goes, and narrowly escapes making the acquaintance of Mr Jardine, from his extraordinary propensity to brush all the lamp-posts he encounters with the shoulder of his coat; and gets home, to the great comfort of his wife and daughter, who have gone cozily off to sleep, in the assurance that their distinguished relative is safely locked up in the police-office. The Frenchman, on the other hand, never gets into mischief from an overdose of eau sucrée, though sometimes he certainly becomes very rombustious from a glass or two of vin ordinaire; and nothing astonishes us so much as the small quantities of small drink which have an effect on the brains of the steadiest of the French population. They get not altogether drunk, but decidedly very talkative, and often quarrelsome, on a miserable modicum of their indigenous small beer, to a degree which would not be excusable if it were brandy. We constantly find whole parties at a pic-nic in a most prodigious state of excitement after two rounds of a bottle—jostling the peasants, and talking more egregious nonsense than before. And when they quarrel, what a Babel of words, and what a quakerism of hands! Instead of a round or two between the parties, as it would be in our own pugnacious disagreements, they merely, when it comes to the worst, push each other from side to side, and shout lustily for the police; and squalling women, and chattering men, and ignorant country people, and elegant mercers' apprentices, and gay-mannered grocers, hustle, and scream, and swear, and lecture, and threaten, and bluster—but not a single blow! The guardian of the public peace appears, and the combatants evanish into thin air; and in a few minutes after this dreadful mêlée, the violin strikes up a fresh waltz, and all goes "gaily as a marriage-bell." We don't say, at the present moment, that one of these methods of conducting a quarrel is better than the other, (though we confess we are rather partial to a hit in the bread-basket, or a tap on the claret-cork)—all we mean to advance is, that with the materials to work upon, Paul de Kock, as a faithful describer of real scenes, has a manifest advantage over the describer of English incidents of a parallel kind.
The affectations of a French cit, when that nondescript animal condescends to be affected, are more varied and interesting than those of their brethren here. He has a taste for the fine arts—he talks about the opera—likes to know artists and authors—and, though living up five or six pairs of stairs in a narrow lane, gives soirées and conversazionés. More ludicrous all this, and decidedly less disgusting, than the assumptions of our man-milliners and fishmongers. There is short sketch by Paul de Kock, called a Soirée Bourgeoise, which we translate entire, as an illustration of this curious phase of French character; and we shall take an early opportunity of bringing before our readers the essays of the daily feuilletonists of the Parisian press, which give a clearer insight into the peculiarities of French domestic literature than can be acquired in any other quarter.
A CIT'S SOIREE.
Lights were observed some time ago, in the four windows of an apartment on the second floor of a house in the Rue Grenetat. It was not quite so brilliant as the Cercle des Etrangers, but still it announced something. These four windows, with lights glancing in them all, had an air of rejoicing, and the industrious inhabitants of the Rue Grenetat, who don't generally go to much expense for illumination, even in their shops, looked at the four windows which eclipsed the street lamps in their brilliancy, and said, "There's certainly something very extraordinary going on this evening at M. Lupot's!" M. Lupot is an honest tradesman, who has retired from business some time. After having sold stationary for thirty years, without ever borrowing of a neighbour, or failing in a payment, M. Lupot, having scraped together an income of three hundred and twenty pounds, disposed of his stock in trade, and closed his ledger, to devote himself entirely to the pleasures of domestic life with his excellent spouse, Madam Felicité Lupot—a woman of an amazingly apathetic turn of mind, who did admirably well in the shop as long as she had only to give change for half-crowns, but whose abilities extended no further. But this had not prevented her from making a very good wife to her husband, (which proves that much talent is not required for that purpose,) and presenting him with a daughter and a son.
The daughter was the eldest, and had attained her seventeenth year; and M. Lupot, who spared nothing on her education, did not despair of finding a husband for her with a soul above sticks of sealing-wax and wafers—more especially as it was evident she had no turn for trade, and believed she had a decided genius for the fine arts—for she had painted her father as a shepherd with his crook, when she was only twelve, and had learned a year after to play "Je suis Lindore" by ear on the piano. M. Lupot was proud of his daughter, who was thus a painter and a musician; who was a foot taller than her papa; who held herself as upright as a Prussian grenadier; who made a curtsy like Taglioni, who had a Roman nose three times the size of other people's, a mouth to match, and eyes so arch and playful, that it was difficult to discover them. The boy was only seven; he was allowed to do whatever he chose—he was so very young; and Monsieur Ascanius availed himself of the permission, and was in mischief from morning to night. His father was too fond of him to scold him, and his mother wouldn't take the trouble to get into a passion.