Taking the precaution to have a wood fire in my second salon, I ventured to invite my friends to see my fire de charbon de terre. They were much surprised and pleased. "Il n'y a pas de mauvaise odeur: ce feu se fait respecter: quelle chaleur!"[56] The combined advantages of greater heat and less cost, (for the coal fire was maintained at about half the expense of a wood fire,) procured imitators. The general commanding the department had a grate set up: the smith made it after his own faulty model, declaring, no doubt, that it was _à l'Anglaise_: the general was, however, well satisfied, telling me that the coal fire warmed the three rooms of his apartment as well as a wood fire in each and every one of them. The woods have been especially ravaged during an æra of insecure possession; and fire-wood, always an expensive article, is generally, throughout France, become dearer than formerly, except in the neighbourhood of great forests. I will endeavour to enable any one to judge how far it may be worth his while to come to reside in France from motives of economy. With his motives for being economical I have nothing to do: any one may be economical at home who pleases; but it does not please some people to be economical at home: others wish to have more for the same money. The French are sometimes puzzled to make out why the English come abroad; perhaps the English are sometimes equally puzzled themselves: but, with reference to economy, sometimes the English seem to them to be travelling for the sake of spending money; sometimes to be staying in France for the purpose of saving it: the riches as well as the high prices of England are exaggerated; the latter to a degree that would make the riches to be merely nominal: then, the difference between French and English prices is supposed to be so great, that the saving, by living in France, must be enormous. Many English have, at first, no clearer notions than the French on these subjects. The price of almost every article, the produce of agricultural or manufacturing industry, has been increased one-third, some say two-fifths, in France since the beginning of the Revolution: the taxes have been trebled. We know that, within the last thirty years, prices and taxes have been augmented in England at about the same rates; so that, on both sides of the water, the proportion has been preserved: but the English knew very little of France during the war; whereas the French knew England by their emigrants, who reported truly the high prices then prevalent: thus some unsettled or erroneous opinions on domestic economy may be accounted for. I left England while paper currency was still in _force_, and before prices were lowered as since they have been: my estimate must be corrected accordingly.