saw a platoon of the Royal
Guard,--literally a whole platoon, so far as numbers and the order of
their promenade was concerned,--staggering drunk, within plain view of
the palace of their master. From this time I became more observant, and
not a day passed that I did not see men, and even women, in the same
situation in the open streets. Usually, when the fact was mentioned to
Americans, they expressed surprise, declaring they had never seen such a
thing! They were too much amused with other sights to regard this; and
then they had come abroad with different notions, and it is easier to
float in the current of popular opinion than to stem it. In two or three
instances I have taken the unbelievers with me into the streets, where I
have never failed to convince them of their mistake in the course of an
hour. These experiments, too, were usually made in the better quarters
of the town, or near our own residence, where one is much less apt to
meet with drunkenness than in the other quarters. On one occasion, a
party of four of us went out with this object, and we passed thirteen
drunken men, during a walk of an hour. Many of them were so far gone as
to be totally unable to walk. I once saw, on the occasion of a festival,
three men literally wallowing in the gutter before my window; a degree
of beastly degradation I never witnessed in any other country.

The usual reply of a Frenchman, when the subject has been introduced,
was that the army of occupation introduced the habit into the capital.
But I have spoken to you of M----, a man whose candour is only equalled
by his information. He laughed at this account of the matter, saying
that he had now known France nearly sixty years; it is his native
country; and he says that he cannot see any difference, in this
particular, in his time. It is probable that, during the wars of
Napoleon, when there was so great a demand for men of the lower classes,
it was less usual to encounter this vice in the open streets, than now,
for want of subjects; but, by all I can learn, there never was a time
when drunkards did not abound in France. I do assure you that, in the
course of passing between Paris and London, I have been more struck by
drunkenness in the streets of the former, than in those of the latter.

Not long since, I asked a labourer if he ever got _grise_, and he
laughingly told me--"yes, whenever he could." He moreover added, that a
good portion of his associates did the same thin