Moreover, there is something in the very _insouciance_ of these country-comers to Paris which provokes the citizen the more. What do they care for their white bell-crowns of ten years ago? or what, for marching and counter-marching the Boulevard, with a fat wife on one arm, and a fat daughter on the other? What do they care for the fashion of a dinner, as they call for a _bouillon_, followed with a steak and onions, flanked by a melon, and wet with a deep bottle of _Julienne premier_? What do they care for any _mode_, or any proprieties of the Faubourg St. Honoré, as they leer at the dancers of the _Bal Mabil_, or roar once and again at the clown who figures at the _Estaminet-Café_ of the Champs Elyssées? In short, says our aggrieved friend, the letter-writer, they press us, and torture us every where; they eat our bread, and drink our wine, and tread on our toes, and crowd us from our seats, as if the gay capital were made for them alone! Nor is the story unreal: whoever has happened upon that mad French metropolis, in the days of its _fête_ madness, can recall the long procession of burly and gross provincials who swarm the streets and gardens, like the lice in the Egypt of Pharaoh. In the old kingly times, when fêtes were regal, and every Frenchman gloated at the velvet panoply, worked over with golden _fleurs-de-lis_, as they now gloat at the columns of their Republican journals, their love for festal-days was well hit off in an old comedy. The shopkeeper (in the play) says to his wife, "Take care of the shop; I am going to see the king." And the wife presently says to the chief clerk, "Take care of the shop; I am going to see the king." And the clerk, so soon as the good woman is fairly out of sight, says to the _garçon_, "Take care of the shop; I am going to see the king." And the _garçon_ enjoins upon the dog to "take care of the shop, as he is going to see the king." And the dog, stealing his nose out at the door, leaves all in charge of the parroquet, and goes to see the king! The joke made a good laugh in those laughing days: nor is the material for as good a joke wanting now. The prefect leaves business with the sub-prefect, that he may go up to the Paris fête. The sub-prefect leaves his care with some commissioner, that he may go up to the Paris fête. And the commissioner, watching his chance, steals away in his turn, and chalks upon the door of the prefecture, "Gone to the fêtes of May."