Nor does the taking charge of these by any means comprise the whole duty of this servant of many masters; neither am I at all competent to say exactly what does: but it seems to me that the answer I generally receive upon desiring that anything may be done is, "Oui, madame, le portier ou la portière fera cela;" and were we suddenly deprived of these factotums, I suspect that we should be immediately obliged to leave our apartments and take refuge in an hôtel, for I should be quite at a loss to know what or how many additional "helps" would be necessary to enable us to exist without them. That the whole style and manner of domestic existence throughout all the middling classes of such a city as Paris should hang upon their porters' lodges, seems tracing great effects to little causes; but I have been so repeatedly told that the failure of the _maisonnettes_ has in a great degree arisen from this, that I cannot doubt it. I know not whether anything which prevents their so completely changing their mode of life as they must do if living in separate houses, is to be considered as an evil or not. The Parisians are a very agreeable, and apparently a very happy population; and who can say what effect the quiet, steady, orderly mode of each man having a small house of his own might produce? What is admirable as a component part of one character, is often incongruous and disagreeable when met in another; and I am by no means certain if the snug little mansion which might be procured for the same rent as a handsome apartment, would not tend to circumscribe and tame down the light spirits that now send _locataires_ of threescore springing to their elegant _premier_ by two stairs at a time. And the prettiest and best _chaussés_ little feet in the world too, which now trip _sans souci_ over the common stair, would they not lag painfully perhaps in passing through a low-browed hall, whose neatness or unneatness had become a private and individual concern? And might not many a bright fancy be damped while calculating how much it would cost to have a few statues and oleanders in it?--and the head set aching by meditating how to get "ce vilain escalier frotté" from top to bottom? Yet all these, and many other cares which they now escape, must fall upon them if they give up their apartments for _maisonnettes_. The fact, I believe, is, that French fortunes, taken at the average at which they at present stand, could not suffice to procure the pretty elegance to which the middle classes are accustomed, unless it were done by the sacrifice of some portion of that costly fastidiousness which English people of the same rank seem to cling to as part of their prerogative.