That man would "deserve well of his country" who should write a "Paris Guide" for the palate. I would do it myself if I could elude the immortality it would occasion me. One is compelled to pioneer his own stomach through the endless _cartes_ of some twelve eating-houses, all famous, before he half knows whether he is dining well or ill. I had eaten for a week at Very's, for instance, before I discovered that, since Pelham's day, that gentleman's reputation has gone down. He is a subject for history at present. I was misled also by an elderly gentleman at Havre, who advised me to eat at _Grignon's_, in the _Passage Vivienne_. Not liking my first _coquilles aux huitres_, I made some private inquiries, and found that his _chef_ had deserted him about the time of Napoleon's return from Elba. A stranger gets misguided in this way. And then, if by accident you hit upon the right house, you may be eating for a month before you find out the peculiar triumphs which have stamped its celebrity. No mortal man can excel in everything, and it is as true of cooking as it is of poetry. The "_Rochers de Cancale_," is now the first eating-house in Paris, yet they only excel in fish. The "_Trois Fréres Provençaux_," have a high reputation, yet their _cotelettes provençales_ are the only dish which you can not get equally well elsewhere. A good practice is to walk about in the Palais Royal for an hour before dinner, and select a master. You will know a _gourmet_ easily--a man slightly past the prime of life, with a nose just getting its incipient blush, a remarkably loose, voluminous white cravat, and a corpulence more of suspicion than fact. Follow him to his restaurant, and give the _garçon_ a private order to serve you with the same dishes as the _bald_ gentleman. (I have observed that dainty livers universally lose their hair early.) I have been in the wake of such a person now for a week or more, and I never lived, comparatively, before. Here we are, however, at the "_Trois Fréres_," and there goes my unconscious model deliberately up stairs. We'll follow him, and double his orders, and if we dine not well, there is no eating in France. LETTER XV. HOPITAL DES INVALIDES--MONUMENT OF TURENNE--MARSHAL NEY--A POLISH LADY IN UNIFORM--FEMALES MASQUERADING IN MEN'S CLOTHES--DUEL BETWEEN THE SONS OF GEORGE IV. AND OF BONAPARTE--GAMBLING PROPENSITIES OF THE FRENCH. The weather still holds warm and bright, as it has been all the month, and the scarcely "premature white pantaloons" appeared yesterday in the Tuileries. The ladies loosen their "boas;" the silken greyhounds of Italy follow their mistresses without shivering; the birds are noisy and gay in the clipped trees--who that had known February in New England would recognize him by such a description?