ood-carving shops, printsellers, pastrycooks--where the savarins
are tricked out, and where _petit fours_ lie in a hundred
varieties--music-shops, bazaars, immense booksellers' windows; they who
are bent on a look at the shops reach a corner of the Grand Opera
Street, where the Emperor's tailor dwells. The attractions here are, as
a rule, a few gorgeous official costumes, or the laurel-embellished tail
coat of the academician. Still proceeding eastward, the shops are
various, and are all remarkable for their decoration and contents. There
is a shop where cots and flower-stands are the main articles for sale;
but such cots and such flower-stands! The cots are for Princes and the
flower-stands for Empresses. I saw the Empress Eugenie quietly issuing
from this very shop, one winter afternoon.

Sophonisba's mother lingered a long time over the cots, and delighted
her mother-eye with the models of babies that were lying in them. One,
she remarked, was the very image of young Harry at home.

And so on to "Barbedienne's," close by the well-known Vachette.

Sophonisba, however, will not wait for our description of the renowned
Felix's establishment, where are the lightest hands for pastry, it is
said, in all France. When last we caught sight of the young lady, she
was _chez_ Felix, demolishing her second _baba!_ May it lie lightly on
her--!

I humbly beg the pardon of Mademoiselle Sophonisba!

CHAPTER V.

THE COCKAYNE FAMILY.

The Cockaynes deserve a few words of formal introduction to the reader,
since he is destined to make their better acquaintance. We have ventured
hitherto only to take a few discreet and distant glimpses at them, as we
found them loitering about the Boulevards on the morrow of their
appearance in Paris. Mr. Cockayne--having been very successful for many
years in the soap-boiling business, to the great discomfort and vexation
of the noses of his neighbours, and having amassed fortune enough to
keep himself and wife and his three blooming daughters among the _creme
de la creme_ of Clapham, and in the list of the elect of society, known
as carriage-people--he had given up the soap-boiling to his two sons,
and had made up his mind to enjoy his money, or rather so much of it as
Mrs. Cockayne might not require. It is true that every shilling of the
money had been made by Cockayne, that every penny-piece represented a
bit of soap which he had manufactured for the better cleansing of his
generation