We exchanged addresses, and promise to see one another very often.

I see a crowd in one corner of the garden, everybody standing still and looking up.  I enquire from my friend whether there is anything wonderful going on.

“These persons are watching the meridian; everyone holds his watch in his hand in order to regulate it exactly at noon.”

“Is there not a meridian everywhere?”

“Yes, but the meridian of the Palais-Royal is the most exact.”

I laugh heartily.

“Why do you laugh?”

“Because it is impossible for all meridians not to be the same.  That is true ’badauderie’.”

My friend looks at me for a moment, then he laughs likewise, and supplies me with ample food to ridicule the worthy Parisians.  We leave the Palais-Royal through the main gate, and I observe another crowd of people before a shop, on the sign-board of which I read “At the Sign of the Civet Cat.”

“What is the matter here?”

“Now, indeed, you are going to laugh.  All these honest persons are waiting their turn to get their snuff-boxes filled.”

“Is there no other dealer in snuff?”

“It is sold everywhere, but for the last three weeks nobody will use any snuff but that sold at the ‘Civet Cat.’”

“Is it better than anywhere else?”

“Perhaps it is not as good, but since it has been brought into fashion by the Duchesse de Chartres, nobody will have any other.”

“But how did she manage to render it so fashionable?”

“Simply by stopping her carriage two or three times before the shop to have her snuff-box filled, and by saying aloud to the young girl who handed back the box that her snuff was the very best in Paris.  The ‘badauds’, who never fail to congregate near the carriage of princes, no matter if they have seen them a hundred times, or if they know them to be as ugly as monkeys, repeated the words of the duchess everywhere, and that was enough to send here all the snuff-takers of the capital in a hurry.  This woman will make a fortune, for she sells at least one hundred crowns’ worth of snuff every day.”

“Very likely the duchess has no idea of the good she has done.”

“Quite the reverse, for it was a cunning artifice on her part.  The duchess, feeling interested in the newly-married young woman, and wishing to serve her in a delicate manner, thought of that expedient which has met with complete success.  You cannot imagine how kind Parisians are.  You are now in the only country in the world where wit can make a fortune by selling either a genuine or a false article:  in the first case, it receives the welcome of intelligent and talented people, and in the second, fools are always ready to reward it, for silliness is truly a characteristic of the people here, and, however wonderful it may appear, silliness is the daughter of wit.  Therefore it is not a paradox to say that the French would be wiser if they were less witty.