In fact, the city has ideas of cleanliness which its middle-class inhabitants do not share.  On a rainy day in Paris the absurdly hoisted dresses will expose to your view all varieties of trimmed, ruffled, and lace petticoats, which would undeniably be benefited by a bath.  All the lingerie has ribbons in it, and sometimes I think they are never intended to be taken out.

When I was at the chateau of a friend not long ago she overheard her maid apologizing to two sisters of charity, for the presence of a bath-tub in her mistress’s dressing-room:  “You must not blame madame la marquise for bathing every day.  She is not more untidy than I, and I, God knows, wash myself but twice a year.  It is just a habit of hers which she caught from the English.”

My friend called to her sharply, and told her she need not apologize for her bathing, to which the maid replied, in a tone of meek justification, “But if madame la marquise only knew how she was regarded by the people for this habit of hers!”

I like the way the French take their amusements.  At the theatre they laugh and applaud the wit of the hero and hiss the villain.  They shout their approval of a duel and weep aloud over the death of the aged mother.  When they drive in the Bois they smile and have an air of enjoyment quite at variance with the bored expression of English and Americans who have enough money to own carriages.  We drove in Hyde Park in London the day before we came to Paris, and nearly wept with sympathy for the unspoken grief in the faces of the unfortunate rich who were at such pains to enjoy themselves.

The second day from that we had a delightful drive in the Bois in Paris.

“How glad everybody seems to be we have come!” I said to my sister.  “See how pleased they all look.”

I was enchanted at their gay faces.  I felt like bowing right and left to them, the way queens and circus girls do.

I never saw such handsome men as I saw in London.  I never saw such beautiful women as I see in Paris.

The Bois has never been so smart as it was the past season, for the horrible fire of the Bazar de la Charite put an end to the Paris season, and left those who were not personally bereaved no solace but the Bois.  Consequently, the costumes one saw between five and seven on that one beautiful boulevard were enough to set one wild.  I always wished that my neck turned on a pivot and that I had eyes set like a coronet all around my head.  My sister and I were in a constant state of ecstasy and of clutching each other’s gowns, trying to see every one who passed.  But it was of no use.  Although they drove slowly on purpose to be seen, if you tried to focus your glance on each one it seemed as if they drove like lightning, and you got only astigmatism for your pains.  I always came home from the Bois with a headache and a stiff neck.