I'd have a carriage, and when it had spill'd me,
Wheel O, and Shafto, and Leader, and all,
If a hoax were got up to announce it had kill'd me,
Just when my death all the land would appal,
I'd be a butterfly!
I'd be a butterfly!
I'd come to life again safe after all:
OCTOBER.—Notice to Quit.
Well, we arrived at Boulogne; and Jemmy, after making inquiries, right and left, about the Baron, found that no such person was known there; and being bent, I suppose, at all events, on marrying her daughter to a lord, she determined to set off for Paris, where, as he had often said, he possessed a magnificent——, hotel he called it; and I remember Jemmy being mightily indignant at the idea; but hotel, we found afterwards, means only a house in French, and this reconciled her. Need I describe the road from Boulogne to Paris? or, need I describe that Capitol itself? Suffice it to say that we made our appearance there, at Murisse's Hotel, as became the family of Coxe Tuggeridge; and saw everything worth seeing in the metropolis in a week. It nearly killed me, to be sure; but, when you're on a pleasure party in a foreign country you must not mind a little inconvenience of this sort.
Well: there is, near the city of Paris, a splendid road and row of trees, which, I don't know why, is called the Shandeleezy, or Elysian Fields, in French: others, I have heard, call it the Shandeleery; but mine I know to be the correct pronunciation. In the middle of this Shandeleezy is an open space of ground, and a tent, where, during the summer, Mr. Franconi, the French Ashley, performs with his horses and things. As everybody went there, and we were told it was quite the thing, Jemmy agreed that we should go too; and go we did. It's just like Ashley's: there's a man just like Mr. Piddicombe, who goes round the ring in a huzzah-dress, cracking a whip; there are a dozen Miss Woolfords, who appear like Polish Princesses, Dihannas, Sultannas, Cachuchas, and heaven knows what! There's the fat man, who comes in with the twenty-three dresses on, and turns out to be the living skeleton! There's the clowns, the sawdust, the white horse that dances a hornpipe, the candles stuck in hoops, just as in our own dear country.