"My dear," Mrs. Cockayne retorted severely to her child, "I didn't have the advantage of lessons in French, at I don't know how many guineas a quarter; nor, I believe, did your father; nor did we have occasion to teach ourselves, like Miss Sharp." "Well, look here, mamma," Miss Sophonisba said, her eyes sparkling and her fingers trembling as they ran down line after line of the advertisement that covered the whole back sheet of the newspaper. "You never saw such bargains. The prices are positively ridiculous. There are silks, and laces, and muslins, and grenadines, and alpacas, and shawls, and cloaks, and plain _sultanes_, and I don't know what, all at such absurdly low prices that I think there must be some mistake about it." "Tut," Mr. Cockayne said; "one of those 'awful sacrifices' and bankrupt stock sales, like those we see in London, and the bills of which are thrown into the letter-box day after day." "You are quite mistaken, papa dear, indeed you are," Theodosia said; "we have asked the person in the _Bureau_ down stairs, and she has told us that these '_Grandes Occasions_' take place twice regularly every year, and that people wait for them to make good bargains for their summer things and for their winter things." The lady in the _Bureau_ was right. The prudent housewives of Paris take advantage of these "_Grandes Occasions_" to make their summer and winter purchases for the family. In the spring-time, when the great violet trade of Paris brightens the corners of the streets, immense advertisements appear in all the daily and weekly papers of Paris, headed by gigantic letters that the fleetest runner may read, announcing extraordinary exhibitions, great exhibitions, and unprecedented spring shows. "Poor Jacques" offers 3000 cashmere shawls at twenty-seven francs each, 2000 silk dresses at twenty-nine francs, and 1000 at thirty-nine francs. "Little Saint Thomas," of the Rue du Bac, has 90,000 French linos, 1000 "Jacquettes gentleman," 500 Zouaves, and 1000 dozen cravats--all at extraordinary low prices. Poor Jacques draws public attention to the "incomparable cheapness" of his immense operations: while Little St. Thomas declares that his assortment of goods is of "exceptional importance," and that he is selling his goods at a cheapness _hors ligne_. For a nation that has twitted the English with being a race of shop-keepers, our friends the Parisians who keep shops are not wanting in devotion to their own commercial interests. Indeed, there is a strong commercial sense in thousands of Parisians who have no shutters to take down. Take for instance the poetical M. Alphonse Karr, whose name has passed all over Europe as the charming author of A Journey round my Garden. Nothing can be more engaging than the manner in which M. Karr leads his readers about with him among his flowers and the parasites of his garden. He falls into raptures over the petals of the rose, and his eye brightens tenderly over the June fly. One would think