[Illustration: IN THE AVENUE DU BOIS DE BOULOGNE, AT NIGHT.] CHAPTER II. THE ENGLISH AND AMERICANS IN PARIS. The Englishman Abroad--M. Lemoinne’s Analysis--The Englishwoman--Sunday in London and in Paris--Americans in Par--The American Girl. Hitherto the types of character which we have noticed have been native. Let us vary them by a glance at the typical foreigner or rather foreigners residing or sojourning in Paris. To begin with the Englishman. In Paris, although there are a great number of Englishmen, it can hardly be said that an English Society exists. Samuel Johnson once complained that Englishmen did not fraternise with one another; that if two visitors called upon a lady about the same time and were shown into her drawing-room, they would, until the lady made her appearance--say for five minutes--simply glare at one other in silence, whereas a couple of foreigners would, although they had never met before, have entered into a conversation. Without, perhaps, being aware of Johnson’s stricture on the social frigidity of his own countrymen, an excellent French writer, John Lemoinne, has noticed the same insular peculiarity in English visitors to Paris. “The English,” he says, “do not seek one another’s acquaintance; they do not come into other lands to find themselves. If they easily form acquaintanceship with foreigners, they are more fastidious in approaching each other. An Englishman will make friends with a Frenchman without the ceremony of presentation, I mean of introduction, but never with another Englishman. A couple of Englishmen stare at each other very hard before saying, ‘How do you do?’” _Punch_ many years ago noticed this national characteristic in a picture which represented two English visitors to Paris breakfasting at the same table in the Hôtel Meurice, and, although the only guests in the room, solemnly ignoring each other’s existence. But M. Lemoinne goes further than _Punch_. “If the English leave their native land,” he says, “it is not to find their own compatriots; it is to see new men and new things. Even when you understand their language, they prefer to talk to you in their bad French. The thing is intelligible enough: they wish to learn, and have no desire to teach. You are regarded simply as a book and a grammar. The foreigner must be turned to some account.” So far excellent. But let us return to Samuel Johnson. When he visited Paris did he air his “bad French”? No, he absolutely refused to speak a word of anything but English. This by no means confirms M. Lemoinne’s proposition. Yet in fairness, let it be said, Johnson’s chief objection to talking French in Paris was a fear lest he should “put his foot in it,” and, lexicographer as he was, excite by some grammatical blunder the ridicule of irreverent Parisians.