rtain the cause of the unhoped-for success which I
obtained in England. I even felt all up my back, thinking
that perhaps some facetious boy might have transformed me
into a walking placard. There was nothing, however; but I
had moustachios and a foreign air! A foreign air! That is
one of the little miseries on which you do not count, O
simple and inexperienced travellers!

"At home you may have the dignity and nobleness of the
Cid--you may be another Talma: but pass the Channel--show
yourself to the English, and in spite of yourself you will
become as comic as Arnal. Arnal! do I say? why, he would not
make them laugh so much as you do; and they would consider
our inimitable comedians Levassor and Hoffmann as serious
personages. Do not be angry, then, or cry with Alceste,--

'Par la sambleu! Messieurs, je ne croyais pas etre
Si plaisant que je suis!'

They would only laugh the more. In this respect the English
are wanting in good taste and indulgence. Their astonishment
is silly and their mockery puerile. The sight of a pair of
moustachios makes them roar with laughter, and they are in
an ecstasy of fun at the sight of a rather broad-brimmed
hat. A people must be very much bored to seize such
occasions for amusing themselves. However, all the
_travers_, like all the qualities of the English, arise from
the national spirit carried to exaggeration. They consider
themselves the _beau ideal_ of human kind. Their stiffness
of bearing, their pale faces, their hair, their whiskers cut
into the shape of mutton chops, the excessive height of
their shirt collars, and the inelegant cut of their
coats--all that makes them as proud as Trafalgar and
Waterloo.

"In our theatres we laugh at them as they laugh at us, and
on that score we are quits. But in our great towns they are
much better and more seriously received than we Frenchmen
are in England.

"At Paris now-a-days nobody laughs at an Englishman; but at
London every body laughs at a Frenchman. We do not make this
remark from any feeling of ill-will; in fact, we think that
to cause a smile on the thin and pinched-up lips of old
England is not a small triumph for our beards and
moustachios. After all, too, the astonishment which the
Englishman manifests at the s