"Cookery, in a little way," continued Madame Miau, "appears to me so simple. To fry well, the fat must boil before putting what you wish fried into it; and this you ascertain by throwing in a piece of bread, which should gild immediately: the color should be yellow or light-brown—never darker. To stew, the only rule is to let your meat simmer gently for a long time, and keep in the steam, and all sorts should be previously sautéd in a rout, which keeps in the juice: the look, also, is important, and a burnt onion helps the color."
Madame Miau, however, could cook more elaborate dishes than those she treated herself to, and I shall subjoin some of her recipes, all
of which I have tried myself; and if the preceding very economical but thoroughly French dishes please as a foundation, I may give in a future number plats of a rather higher description.
STUDENT LIFE IN PARIS.
The first impression of the Student of Students in Paris is one of curiosity. "When do the students find time to study?" is the natural inquiry. The next impression solves the mystery, by leading to the satisfactory conclusion, that the students do not find time to study. To be sure, eminent physicians, great painters, and acute lawyers, do occasionally throw sufficient light upon society to render its intellectual darkness visible. And the probabilities are that these physicians are not born with diplomas, as children are, occasionally, with cauls; nor the painters sent into the world with their pencils at their fingers' ends; nor the lawyers launched into existence sitting upon innate woolsacks. The inference, then, is, that education has done something toward their advancement, and that they, necessarily, have done something toward their education.
But the lives of great men are the lives of individuals, not of masses. And with these I have nothing now to do. It is possible that the Quartier Latin contains at the present moment more than one "mute inglorious" Moliere, or Paul de Kock, guiltless, as yet, of his readers' demoralization. Many a young man who now astonishes the Hôtel Corneille, less by his brains than his billiards, may one day work hard at a barricade, and harder still, subsequently, at the galleys! But how are we to know that these young fellows, with their long legs, short coats, and faces patched over with undecided beards, are geniuses, unless, as our excellent friend, the English plebeian has it, they "behave as such?" Let us hope, at any rate, that, like glow-worms, they appear mean and contemptible in the glare of society, only to exhibit their shining qualities in the gloom of their working hours.
It is only, then, with the outward life of the students that I have to deal. With this, one may become acquainted without a very long residence in the Quartier Latin—that happy quarter where every thing is subservient to the student's taste, and accommodated to the student's pocket—where amusement is even cheaper than knowledge—where braces are unrespected, and blushes unknown—where gloves are not enforced, and respectability has no representative.
If the student be opulent—that is to say, if he have two hundred francs a month (a magnificent sum in the quarter) he lives where he pleases—probably in the Hôtel Corneille; if he be poor, and is compelled to vegetate, as many are, upon little more than a quarter of that amount, he lives where he can—no one knows where, and very few know how. It is principally from among this class, who are generally the sons of peasants or ouvriers, that France derives her great painters, lawyers, and physicians. They study more than their richer comrades;
not only because they have no money to spend upon amusement, but because they have, commonly, greater energy and higher talents. Indeed, without these qualities they would not have been able to emancipate themselves from the ignoble occupations to which they were probably born; unlike the other class of students, with whom the choice of a profession is guided by very different considerations.