So the foreigners no longer make their way direct to the Palais Royal now, on the morrow of their arrival in Paris.  If they be at the Louvre, they bend westward along the Rue de Rivoli, and by the Rue de la Paix, to the brilliant boulevards.  If they be in the Grand Hotel, they issue at once upon these famous boulevards, and the ladies are in a feminine paradise at once.  Why, exactly opposite to the Grand Hotel is Rudolphi’s remarkable shop, packed artistically with his works of art—­ay, and of the most finished and cunning art—­in oxidized silver.  His shop is most admirably adapted to the articles the effect of which he desires to heighten.  It is painted black and pointed with delicate gold threads.  The rich array of jewellery and the rare ecclesiastical ornaments stand brightly out from the sombre case, and light the window.  The precious stones, the lapis lazuli, the malachite, obtain a new brilliance from the rich neutral tints and shades of the chased dulled silver in which they are held.

Sophonisba, her mamma and sisters, are not at much trouble to decide the period to which the bracelet, or the brooch, or the earring belongs. “Cinque cento, my dear!  I know nothing about that.  I think it would suit my complexion.”

“I confess to a more modern taste, Sophonisba.  That is just the sort of thing your father would like.  Now, do look at those—­sphinxes, don’t you call them—­for a brooch.  I think they’re hideous.  Did you ever see such ears?  I own, that diamond dew-drop lying in an enamel rose leaf, which I saw, I think, in the Rue de la Paix, is more to my taste.”

And so the ladies stroll westward to the famous Giroux (where you can buy, an it please you, toys at forty guineas each—­babies that cry, and call “mamma,” and automata to whom the advancement of science and art has given all the obnoxious faculties of an unruly child), or east to the boulevards, which are known the wide world over, at least by name, the Boulevards de la Madeleine, des Capucines, des Italiens, Montmartre.  These make up the heart and soul of Paris.  Within the limits of these gorgeous lines of shops and cafes luxury has concentrated all her blandishments and wiles.  This is the earthly heaven of the Parisians.  Here all the celebrities air themselves.  Here are the Opera stars, the lights of literature, the chiefs of art, the dandies of the Jockey Club, the prominent spendthrifts and eccentrics of the day.  About four o’clock in the afternoon all the known Paris figures are lounging upon the asphaltum within this charmed space.  Within this limit—­where the Frenchman deploys all his seductive, and vain, and frivolous airs; where he wears his best clothes and his best manners; where he loves to be seen, and observed, and saluted—­the tradesmen of the capital have installed establishments the costliness and elaborateness of which it is hardly possible to exaggerate.  The gilding and the mirrors, the marbles and the bronze, the myriad lamps of every