They have policemen in Paris, I suppose. Indeed I know they have. Why, then, is so strong a detachment of the military necessary to conduct that little boy to prison? Is it that the civil officers are less to be trusted with a service of danger than our own gallant Blues, or that juvenile delinquency exists in France to an extent unknown in our favoured clime?
Who is he, I wonder!!!
I should like to know why the French can't allow their trees to grow as they like, instead of cropping and clipping them, like so many whiskers on the face of Nature. These singular-looking ter-restrial spheres, planted in square tubs, in the Luxembourg Gardens, I am told are orange-trees. Very good. Their resemblance to oranges is certainly striking. I should be happy to accept their appropriate rotundity as a precedent for the invariable rule (as having an instructive tendency), but that, on inspection, I do not find the neighbouring groves to consist of pear-trees as, judging from appearances, I was induced to imagine.
The French, I am told, down to the lowest grades of society, are proverbial for their gallantry and consideration for the fair sex. Appearances are certainly deceptive; but there is no trusting to them in Paris. For instance, these individuals, I have ascertained, belong to the class ouvrier:—
To avoid the slightest mistake, I have hunted up the dictionary meaning of that word. I find it to be homme qui travaille—industriel.
They are certainly a strange race. How anybody can sleep, with gentlemen parading the streets about a hundred at a time, before daybreak, and continuing their what's-his-name's tattoo every ten minutes, is a puzzler.