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PART II.

67. THE FÊTE of August 15 IN PARIS.

A. The Marchand de Coco.

In the midst of the multitude, the laughter, the shouting, the dust, the din, the smoke of gunpowder from the theatres, and of tobacco from a hundred thousand mouths, I always see one old familiar form, and hear one old, old familiar sound. Alas! there he is, the very same. The little old man who sells coco. Why do they call liquorice water 'coco'? His tin pagoda, with the drapery of red cotton velvet, and its tricoloured flag at the back, is strapped behind his back as usual. The pipe and tap pass under his arm. The same array of glasses is slung before him. He has the same cry, 'Coco! Coco à la glace! à la glace! demandez le Coco!' To-day he calls it 'Le Coco Impérial. He tinkles the same little bell. He trusted me five farthings when I was a boy and thirsty, and had spent a week's pocketmoney in my first cigar. How sick it made me, and how I lay on my back moaning and gasping like an indisposed seal, in a thicket of a wilderness, very wild and incult in those days, but which is now the Bois de Bologne. Coco, Coco à la glace! I will have another five farthings' worth though it cost me a franc. How long will this ancient continue to sell Coco? Till the crack of doom. Bourbons, Orleans, Bonapartes, Monarchies, Republics, Empires are all one to him. He only wants the weather to be warm and people to be thirsty and schoolboys to be out for a holiday. Gently, but distinctly, tinkles his peaceful little tocsin. 'Coco! Coco!' Surely here is a man who deserves well of his country. If ever he ascended a barricade it must have been in June '48, to cry' Coco à la glace.'

B. Open-air Shops..

Nothing is complete in France without a considerable admixture of the shopkeeping element. Our lively neighbours are accustomed to call us 'a nation of shopkeepers.' Well may we return the compliment by calling them a nation of stall-keepers and pedlars. Set a Frenchman, stark naked, in the midst of the Great Desert of Sahara, and in a quarter of an hour he would make something pretty out of some sand and a sunbeam, and begin selling it, and overcharging for it too, à l'instar de Paris. As though there were not shops and stalls enough opposite, three sides of the Trocadero had been abandoned to the marchands forains, or petty dealers and hucksters who are permitted to line the boulevards with their booths during the first week in January. Taking the Trocadero as a fair, I hold it in every way appropriate that there should be stalls for the sale of pastry, cool drinks, tobacco, toys, sausages, and the like; but what on earth the fête of the Emperor Napoleon III. can have to do with frenzied attempts at the retail sale of photographs of the Venus of Milo, and the Grande Duchesse de Gerolstein; of porte-monnaies and electro-plated spoons; of indiarubber goloshes and embroidered garters, of shaving glasses and earthenware teapots, passes my comprehension. I was passionately entreated to purchase, first a reading-lamp with a japanned reflector, silvered inside, and next a packet of 'hygienic soap.' Now, did I or anybody else come to the Trocadero with a view of washing or reading? Those processes are not recreative. They are duties, not pastimes.

C. Open-air Theatres.

As for the open-air theatres, no sooner was the curtain of one down than the curtain of the other one went up. The dramas performed were of the spectacular pantomimic order. The stage was periodically occupied by strong bodies of regular troops, whose red trousers had a very lively and picturesque effect, and who went through martial evolutions, and drummed and fifed and trumpeted, and fired off their muskets and charged with their bayonets to the intense delight of the audience on the grass. I was told at one theatre that the piece was 'The Siege of Puebla ;' but it could hardly have been about Mexico.

My belief is that it was the very same piece I saw in July 1839, performed by the sons and daughters of the very same actors. As for the plot, I think that in a very few words I can describe it. Julius Cæsar runs away with the wife of Vercingetorix, a Gaulish chief. Timour the Tartar, brother-in-law of the injured husband, forthwith invades Cochin China with a strong force of Prætorian Guards and Chasseurs de Vincennes. Cambodge is taken. But Abd-el-Kader being brought in a prisoner, is decorated with the Legion of Honour by Marshal Bazaine. General volley of musketry. The enemy fly, but are hotly pursued by a vivandière and a comic corporal of Sapeurs. Then the corps de ballet enter and dance a bolero. The comic corporal is named lieutenant on the spot. The Kabyles then come down in force. The vivandière treats with scorn the advances of a spy in brown pantaloons. Another volley of musketry. The troops form square. The comic corporal crosses the stage mounted on the back of the spy, whom he belabours with a broomstick. A Bedouin Arab appears on the summit of a rock pointing a gun menacingly at the vivandière. General discharge of musketry. Waving of tricoloured flags. The drums beat aux champs. The spy turns out to be the father of the comic corporal. He has done good service to France under the most disadvantageous circumstances. He is decorated with the Legion of Honour. The vivandière and the comic corporal kneel to receive his blessing, and are forthwith united in the bonds of matrimony. An individual in general's uniform appears, on a live horse, at the back of the stage. The fiery steed shies and the general is thrown. He appears hurt. He rubs himself. Indescribable enthusiasm. Final discharge of musketry. Vive l'Empereur! Tableau. Curtain. End. This is the drama of the Trocadero. You may call it the Siege of Puebla' if you choose, but in my time it was the 'Storming of Constantine and the Capture of Mazagran,' and it has been in its time the 'Siege of Corunna,' the Capitulation of Ulm,' the ‘Bombardment of San Sebastian,' the Defence of Pampeluna,' and the 'Battle of the Lake Regillus.'

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D. Les Vieux de la Vieille.

One sight I did like it was the procession of the remaining force of the troops which actually did make war for the Con

sulate, and served under the first Emperor. There are about a hundred of these veterans left, and after hearing mass at the Invalides, headed by a drum-major, so old that he might have been at Agincourt, they march to pay homage to the first Emperor, as now represented on the column of the Place Vendôme. Alas! the fine old characteristic statue of the 'Petit Caporal' has been exiled to a St. Helena called Courbevoie, and the great man is represented by a figure in a ' night rail,' in his hand a chamber candlestick. As this real veteran corps of about a hundred men, dressed in what are now grotesque uniforms, but which to our grandfathers were the type of dress of the only soldiers for whom they cared, advanced towards the square, the drums beat, the Guards turned out and presented arms, and private individuals uncovered, as the old soldiers of the First Empire marched past. This morning many a memory was carried back, no doubt, to Ulm and Austerlitz, to the glories of the East and the calamities of the North. This is, of course, conjecture; but I do know that several eyes were dimmed with tears, and that even mere bystanders could not witness unmoved the homage of these heroes to the statue of that great chief, in whom they believed as in a divinity. As the ceremony was going on, Marshal Canrobert in the full uniform of to-day, returning from Notre Dame, where he had been in company with the Senate, the Corps Législatif, and all the authorities to high mass, came on the ground with all his A.D.C.'s, and so the present and the past were curiously contrasted. They differ as to dress truly, indeed a more powerful contrast than the be-powdered and pigtailed soldier of the First Empire, his body buttoned up as in a case, and his legs encumbered with gaiters like those abominations we call 'butcher's boots,' and the active, light, little Zouave or Chasseur of to-day can scarcely be conceived. They differ in dress, but I question if there is any other difference between the French soldiers of the first and of the second half of the nineteenth century.

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Charlotte was a married lady,

And a moral man was Werther,
And for all the wealth of Indies,
Would do nothing for to hurt her.
So he sighed, and pined, and ogled,
And his passion boiled and bubbled,
Till he blew his silly brains out,
And no more was by it troubled.
Charlotte, having seen his body

Borne before her on a shutter,
Like a well-conducted person,

Went on cutting bread and butter.-Thackeray.

69. LORD ELLENBOROUGH AND THE BANDBOX.

'Lord Ellenborough was once about to go on the circuit, when Lady Ellenborough said that she should like to accompany him. He replied that he had no objection, provided she did not encumber the carriage with bandboxes, which were his utter abhorrence. During the first day's journey, Lord Ellenborough, happening to stretch his legs, struck his foot against something below the seat. He discovered that it was a bandbox. Up went the window and out went the bandbox. The coachman stopped, and the footmen, thinking that the bandbox had tumbled out of the window by some extraordinary chance, were going to pick it up, when Lord Ellenborough furiously called out, "Drive on!" The bandbox accordingly was left by the ditch-side. Having reached the county town where he was to officiate as judge, Lord Ellenborough proceeded to array himself for his appearance in the Court-house. "Now," said he, "where's my wig-where is my wig?" "My lord," replied his attendant, "it was thrown out of the carriage window."-Samuel Rogers.

70. THE DUKE OF WELLINGTON AND DR. HUTTON.

It is related of the Duke of Wellington that, having to select an officer of the Corps of Royal Engineers to fill a post requiring considerable scientific attainments, he determined to take the opinion of the late Dr. Hutton as to the qualifications of one who had been recommended to him for the vacant situation,

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