The other morning I was lying quietly in bed, waiting for the bonne to fetch my cafe noir, when a most extraordinary sound caught my ear. The cries of Paris marchands early in the morning are curious enough usually, but this one exceeded in quaintness all that I had heard since my arrival. Between the words "Chante, chante, Adrienne!" a horrible braying broke forth, resounding through our quiet faubourg in a manner which brought many a _bonnet de nuit_ to the windows. I got up to see what was the matter. "Chante, chante, Adrienne!" re-echoed again over the smooth asphalte. By this time a crowd of gamins--the gamins are always up, no matter how early--had gathered in the middle of the street around the object of the disturbance. It was a marchand of vegetables in a greasy blouse, leading an ass. There was a huge pannier on the ass's back full of kitchen vegetables, which the marchand was crying and praising to our sleepy faubourg. With an economy worthy of Silhouette, the scamp had taught Adrienne--for that was the beast's name--to bray every time he said "Pommes de terre, de terre--terre!" As often as he said this, or "Chante, Adrienne, chante!" Adrienne would switch her tail and _chante_ lugubriously, setting the whole neighborhood in commotion. So adroitly had he trained the creature--with her thigh-bones sticking in peaks through her hide, and a visage of preternatural solemnity--that when her master but lifted his finger Adrienne would go through her part with admirable gravity, thus helping her lord to get his daily bread. I laughed till the bonne came with my coffee, and was glad to see the pannier gradually emptying as the grotesque procession defiled through our street, with a rear-guard of exhilarated urchins poking at poor meek Adrienne in a manner the most _mechant_. And so on they went till the peasant and his invaluable assistant were quite out of hearing. There is no end to the originality of the Parisians. If you but go to a kiosque to get a _Figaro_, the white-capped marchande has something clever to say. The rain, the air, the clouds, the sun are full of _esprit_ for her--are to her banques de France, upon which she has an unlimited credit--_credit fonder_, if you will, _credit mobilier_, or what not. The _conducteur_ who stands behind his omnibus and obligingly helps you in, says _Merci_! with an accent so exquisite that it is like wit or poetry or music, utterly throwing you into despair after your months and months of travail and dozens and dozens of louis lavished on incompetent professors. "Pronounce that for me, please," said I one day to a gentleman who had just spoken some word whose secret of pronunciation I had been trying to filch for weeks--some delicate little jewel of a word, faint as a perfume, expressive as only a tiny Parisian word can be--and he did so in the politest manner in the world, adding some little witticism which I do not recall. Whereupon I went home and instantly dismissed my "professor."