Expecting to be cold, I had ordered fire, and sat down by it to read my letters as soon as I arrived, not noticing that the little parlour was getting much too hot. Presently, in comes the chambermaid, to put the bedroom in order, which one enters through the parlour. Perceiving that I am mismanaging myself, in the way of fresh air, as she passes through, “Il fait bien chaud, monsieur, ici,” says she reprovingly, and with entire self-possession. Now that is French servant-character of the right old school. She knows her own position perfectly, and means to stay in it, and wear her little white radiant frill of a cap all her days. She knows my position also; and has not the least fear of my thinking her impertinent because she tells me what it is right that I should know. Presently afterwards, an evidently German-importation of waiter brings me up my breakfast, which has been longer in appearing than it would have been in old times. It looks all right at first,—the napkin, china, and solid silver sugar basin, all of the old régime. Bread, butter,—yes, of the best still. Coffee, milk,—all right too. But, at last, here is a bit of the new régime. There are no sugar-tongs; and the sugar is of beetroot, and in methodically similar cakes, which I must break with my finger and thumb if I want a small piece, and put back what I don’t want for my neighbour, to-morrow. ‘Civilization,’ this, you observe, according to Professor Liebig and Mr. John Stuart Mill. Not according to old French manners, however. Now, my readers are continually complaining that I don’t go on telling them my plan of life, under the rule of St. George’s Company. I have told it them, again and again, in broad terms: agricultural life, with as much refinement as I can enforce in it. But it is impossible to describe what I mean by ‘refinement,’ except in details which can only be suggested by practical need; and which cannot at all be set down at once. Here, however, to-day, is one instance. At the best hotel in what has been supposed the most luxurious city of modern Europe,—because people are now always in a hurry to catch the train, they haven’t time to use the sugar-tongs, or look for a little piece among differently sized lumps, and therefore they use their fingers; have bad sugar instead of good, and waste the ground that would grow blessed cherry trees, currant bushes, or wheat, in growing a miserable root as a substitute for the sugar-cane, which God has appointed to grow where cherries and wheat won’t, and to give juice which will freeze into sweet snow as pure as hoar-frost.