asant-woman hauling her husband home in a
hand-cart _dead drunk_; but, for all that, the French are emphatically a
sober people, either constitutionally or from climatic or other reasons: I
do not pretend to say which.

On the whole, therefore, the picture of the French cafes is a pleasant
one, and it is a pity the bar-rooms of America and the gin-shops of
England were not more like them. They are a compromise, it is true, but
that is better than the prohibitionist's vain fight.

Tortoni's, the last survivor of whose founders died only the other day,
has its historical reminiscences. Therein is to be found the salon, known
as the "blue salon," once hallowed by the occupancy of M. de Talleyrand.
The window is still pointed out at which the eminent diplomatist used to
sit surveying the crowds that thronged the Boulevards, with his usual fine
and cynical smile, like a Mephistopheles of the nineteenth century. A
little later, and one has a vision of a young man of short stature,
elegantly dressed, who every day or two rides up to door or window,
springs from his horse, calls for a particular kind of ice, which he
imbibes with a sort of nervous haste, and then disappears. This little
dandy, always in a hurry, alert, nervous and sharp-eyed, is a future ruler
of the nation: it is M. Thiers. Around Tortoni's there hovers too the
souvenir of that other gracious and graceful dandy, king of fashion in his
day, the count D'Orsay. It was at a breakfast at Tortoni's that the
preliminaries were arranged for the famous duel wherein D'Orsay appeared
as the champion of the Virgin Mary. Some irreverent jester having made
some slighting remark respecting the Virgin, D'Orsay took the matter up
and called the speaker to account. "For," said the count, "the Virgin is a
woman, and as such ought not to be slandered with impunity."

The cafes chantants of Paris form a division by themselves. The most noted
of these is the Eldorado, which has given more than one prominent
performer to the Parisian stage--Theresa, who, once a dishwasher in a
hotel, left her soap-suds and mop to become a Parisian celebrity, the
instructress of a princess, and now a really talented comic actress and
bouffe singer; Judic and Theo, the rival beauties of the Opera Bouffe; and
lively little Boumaine, now one of the stars of the Varietes. The career
of Madame Theo has been a strange one. She was originally a failure at the
Eldorado, and used to cry her eyes out behind t