The home of the French middle classes, I have already said, is not, in the Anglo-Saxon conception of the word, an abode of comfort. Small economies are too rigidly practised therein. The _salon_, or sitting-room, is apt to be shut up all the week in the interest of the furniture, and only opened on the single afternoon the lady of the house is supposed to be at home to her friends. Then in winter, just before the hour of reception, the meagre wood-fire is set ablaze, and sometimes tea is prepared, along with biscuits far from fresh. You may be thankful—if tea is to be offered you, a rare occurrence—should the tea be no staler than the biscuits, I have known a Frenchwoman, the sister of a professor at Stanislas College, who admitted to me naïvely that she changed the leaves of her tea every four or five days. She informed me that this economical hint was given her by a Scotchwoman, who assured her that in Scotland nobody was extravagant enough to make fresh tea every day. I hope this Scotchwoman was an invention of the Frenchwoman. It would be terrible to believe that all the families of Scotland drink their daily dose of slow poison. In winter also are the two meals of noon and evening consumed in a frigid atmosphere, for such a thing as a dining-room fire is unheard of in the class I refer to. The napery will be of the coarsest quality, and oftener coloured than white. The house is generally run with a single maid-of-all-work, who receives a monthly wage of from thirty to forty francs, and her life is not an easy one. The lady already referred to had her _bonne_ from the country, where existence is still harsher than in Paris, and paid her thirty francs a month. The unfortunate _bonne_ for this sum had to wash, clean, scour, cook, market, make beds, and sew. The lady was pious, and a philanthropist, but pious and philanthropic persons are sometimes harsh taskmasters, and not infrequently dishonest. The _bonne_ was obliged, out of her scant wages, to pay a hundred francs a year for her bedroom, which was merely a box under the roof, without ventilation or fireplace, so that in winter she froze, and in summer she was baked. She also had to buy her own wine and coffee, if she needed either, and never, from week’s end to week’s end, tasted of dessert or sweets, or knew what it was to dine off fowl, when by rare chance fowl was served at table. I was this lady’s “paying guest” for four or five months; and if my lot was a hard one, I could console myself with the reflection that the servant’s was infinitely harder. True, the servant did not, as I did, pay an exorbitant price for those discomforts, but we could both say that we had to deal with a singularly pleasant, affable, well-spoken, and agreeable woman, surprisingly intelligent, who kept her house in admirable order. She was secretary for several Catholic philanthropic works, and taught catechism, for a consideration, to poor children in some disreputable quarter of Paris.