“Ah! to be sure, my child, so she does,” Sophonisba’s mamma replies.  “I remember.  Very quiet-looking kind of place, isn’t it?” It is impossible to say what description of “loud” place had dwelt in the mind of Sophonisba’s mamma as the locale where the Empress Eugenie’s milliner “made” for her Majesty.  Perhaps she hoped to see two cent gardes doing duty at the door of an or-molu paradise.

At every step the ladies find new excitement.  By the quiet door of Madame Laure is the renowned Neapolitan Ice Establishment, well known to most ladies who have been in Paris.  Why should there not be a Neapolitan ice cafe like this in London?  Ices we have, and we have Granger’s; but here is ice in every variety, from the solid “bombe”—­which we strongly recommend ladies to bear in mind next time—­to the appetizing Ponch a la Romaine!  Again, sitting here on summer evenings, the lounger will perceive dapper bonnes, or men-servants, going in and out with little shapely white paper parcels which they hold daintily by the end.  Madame has rung for an ice, and this little parcel, which you might blow away, contains it.  Now, why should not a lady be able to ring for an ice—­and an exquisitely-flavoured Neapolitan ice—­on the shores of “perfidious Albion?”

“I wish Papa were here,” cries Sophonisba; “we should have ices.”

Sophonisba’s mamma merely remarks that they are very unwholesome things.

Hard by is Christofle’s dazzling window, Christofle being the Elkington of France.

“Tut! it quite blinds one!” says the mamma of Sophonisba.  Christofle’s window is startling.  It is heaped to the top with a mound of plated spoons and forks.  They glitter in the light so fiercely that the eye cannot bear to rest upon them.  Impossible to pass M. Christofle without paying a moment’s attention to him.  And now we pass the asphaltum of the boulevard of boulevards—­that known as “the Italiens.”  This is the apple of the eye of Paris.

“Now, my dears,” says Sophonisba’s mamma, “now we can really say that we are in Paris.”  The shops claimed the ladies’ attention one by one.  They passed with disdain the cafes radiant with mirror and gold, where the selfish men were drinking absinthe and playing at dominoes.  It had always been the creed of Sophonisba’s mamma that men were selfish creatures, and she had come to Paris only to see that she was right.  They passed on to Potel’s.

Potel’s window is a sight that is of Paris Parisian.  It is more imposing than that of Chevet in the Palais Royal.  In the first place Potel is on “the Italiens.”  It is a daily store of all the rarest and richest articles of food money can command for the discontented palate of man.  The truffled turkeys are the commonest of the articles.  Everybody eats truffled turkeys, must be the belief of Potel.  If salmon could peer into the future, and if they had any ambition, they would desire, after death, to be artistically arrayed in fennel in the shop-window of Potel.  Would not the accommodating bird who builds an edible nest work with redoubled ardour, if he could be assured that his house would be some day removed to the great window on “the Italiens?”