nspired strong regard in Dickens, he had
already found "as informal and good-natured as ever, but not so gay as
usual, and having an anxious, haggard way with him, as if his
responsibilities were more than he had bargained for." Nor, to account
for this, had Dickens far to seek, when a little leisure enabled him to
see something of what was passing in Paris in that last year of Louis
Philippe's reign. What first impressed him most unfavourably was a
glimpse in the Champs Elysees, of the King himself coming in from the
country. "There were two carriages. His was surrounded by horseguards.
It went at a great pace, and he sat very far back in a corner of it, I
promise you. It was strange to an Englishman to see the Prefet of Police
riding on horseback some hundreds of yards in advance of the cortege,
turning his head incessantly from side to side, like a figure in a Dutch
clock, and scrutinizing everybody and everything, as if he suspected all
the twigs in all the trees in the long avenue."

But these and other political indications were only, as they generally
prove to be, the outward signs of maladies more deeply-seated. He saw
almost everywhere signs of canker eating into the heart of the people
themselves. "It is a wicked and detestable place, though wonderfully
attractive; and there can be no better summary of it, after all, than
Hogarth's unmentionable phrase." He sent me no letter that did not
contribute something of observation or character. He went at first
rather frequently to the Morgue, until shocked by something so repulsive
that he had not courage for a long time to go back; and on that same
occasion he had noticed the keeper smoking a short pipe at his little
window, "and giving a bit of fresh turf to a linnet in a cage." Of the
condition generally of the streets he reported badly; the quays on the
other side of the Seine were not safe after dark; and here was his own
night experience of one of the best quarters of the city. "I took Georgy
out, the night before last, to show her the Palais Royal lighted up; and
on the Boulevard, a street as bright as the brightest part of the Strand
or Regent-street, we saw a man fall upon another, close before us, and
try to tear the cloak off his back. It was in a little dark corner near
the Porte St. Denis, which stands out in the middle of the street. After
a short struggle, the thief fled (there were thousands of people walking
about), and was captured just on the other