be included, you discover that you might have boarded, with comfort, independence, and good living, for the same price in one of the hotels of the Rue de Rivoli. For independence is the very last thing the little _bourgeoise_ is disposed to allow her “paying guest.” It needs a quality of brain of which she is destitute, to recognise a single woman’s right to liberty. The foreign boarder’s days under her roof constitute a march through surprises. Here no gleaming glass and shining damask at table; no flowers, no silver, no tasteful arrangement of desert; for tablecloth a coarse sheet and cloths to match for napkins, sometimes patched, and invariably sewn down the middle. There is nothing to please the eye or the palate, but the disappointed boarder must stoically hold her tongue if she would maintain agreeable relations. The hostess is an arbitrary as well as a parsimonious and dishonest housekeeper. The exactions, the arrogance, must be allowed to remain all on her side and the malcontent has nothing to do but pay a month’s board and lodging in advance and pack up her things. If she stays, a hushed civility is expected from her, and all payments rigidly in advance. Why, the little _bourgeoise_ should have instituted this singular law, that a month’s food should be paid for before it has been consumed, I have never been able to understand: but I confess I have never been able to master the complicated ethics of this interesting woman. She is a fervent Catholic, attends church regularly morning and evening, confesses, teaches Catholicism and morality to the outcast infant, and never seems to suspect that honesty is one of the virtues incorporated in the Christian doctrine. When she orders anything for you she will pay one price in the shop and charge you another; yet, good, consistent creature, she goes to market on market days after Mass to take note of the prices, in order to calculate to a farthing what the day’s purchases will cost, so that the _bonne_ shall not cheat her of the value of a sou. This is hard on the _bonne_, whom she pays as little as she can, and underfeeds, and overworks, and who is thus defrauded of one of the acknowledged perquisites of the servant in France,—_le sou du franc_. When a Parisian servant makes a purchase over a franc, each tradesman returns her a sou on every franc paid in cash. The avid “little _bourgeoise_” usually insists on having this sou back, and if the _bonne_ is meek and afraid she gives up the sou, for her mistress understands the question of perquisites only in her own right. She watches her servant closely, though there is nothing of a shrew or a Sally Brass about her. She victimises her through the attendant vice of avaricious, unsleeping suspicion. And so she visits the kitchen when the girl has left, to see if a lump of sugar or a piece of bread, or anything else, should be secreted anywhere. Perhaps once a week she will give the domestic martyr