Under such circumstances, coupled with the utter insignificance of an ordinary individual in a town like Paris, you will easily understand that we had the first months of our residence entirely to ourselves. As a matter of course, we called on our own minister and his wife; and, as a matter of course, we have been included in the dinners and parties that they are accustomed to give at this season of the year. This, however, has merely brought us in contact with a chance-medley of our own countrymen, these diplomatic entertainments being quite obviously a matter of accident, so far as the set is concerned. The dinners of your banker, however, are still worse, since with them the visiting-list is usually a mere extract from the ledger. Our privacy has not been without its advantages. It has enabled us to visit all the visible objects without the incumbrance of engagements, and given me leisure to note and to comment on things that might otherwise have been overlooked. For several months we have had nothing to do but to see sights, get familiarized with a situation that, at first, we found singularly novel, and to brush up our French. I never had sufficient faith in the popular accounts of the usages of other countries, to believe one-half of what I have heard. I distrusted from the first the fact of ladies--I mean real, _bona fide_ ladies, women of sentiment, delicacy, taste, and condition--frequenting public eating-houses, and habitually living, without the retirement and reserve that is so necessary to all _women_, not to say _men_, of the _caste_. I found it difficult, therefore, to imagine I should meet with many females of condition in _restaurans_ and _cafes_. Such a thing might happen on an emergency, but it was assailing too much all those feelings and tastes which become inherent in refinement, to suppose that the tables of even the best house of the sort in Paris could be honoured by the presence of such persons, except under particular circumstances. My own observation corroborated this opinion, and, in order to make sure of the fact, I have put the question to nearly every Frenchwoman of rank it has since been my good fortune to become sufficiently acquainted with to take the liberty. The answer has been uniform. Such things are sometimes done, but rarely; and even then it is usual to have the service in a private room. One old lady, a woman perfectly competent to decide on such a point, told me frankly:--"We never do it, except by way of a frolic, or when in a humour which induces people to do many other silly and unbecoming things. Why should we go to the _restaurateurs_ to eat? We have our own houses and servants as well as the English, or even you Americans"--it may be supposed I laughed--"and certainly the French are not so devoid of good taste as not to understand that the mixed society of a public-house is not the best possible company for a woman."