but we thought it was better to defer this till another day. _May 13th._--I was very much surprised to see here, as well as at Paris, not the least regard paid to Sunday. All the shops were open, houses were building, and people sitting working at their doors, seeming more industrious this day than any other; even the tradespeople made a point of bringing their things on a Sunday. The English clergyman was a Mr. Beaver. At church we saw several people that we had formerly seen at Clifton and Bath; it was quite full of English. JACK _May 14th._--About this time a little circumstance happened which shows the French inconsistency. We wanted a jack put up in the kitchen. The mason and his boy came first, but not finding the blacksmith there, they went away; then came the blacksmith and his boy, but not finding the mason, they went away. After going on in this way for some time, they at last all met. The mason then took out of a paper bag some delicate-looking white powder, which, after mixing into a paste, he layed with great care on to a fine silver trowel, and then proceeded to dab it on to the wall with his fingers. _May 15th._--We now began to be rather surprised that the clothes we had left at Passy, and which the porter said he would send directly, had not arrived. Stephens, our foreign courier, who spoke English, was therefore despatched to bring them. We afterwards found that, so far from knowing a person to send them by, the porter had consulted with Stephens and asked him if he knew of any person; so that we might have waited long for our clothes if we had trusted to the porter's word. The French are very fond of making promises, but not quite so fond of performing them; this we found to be the case with our house: one of our beds broke down several times; some rooms wanted tables, some jugs, some carpets, and all window-curtains--so that you could see across the yard from one room to another; they found it very easy to promise all these things, but we waited many a week before we got one. The English family above us had one baby of a few months old, called Angelica Ellen, which we were very fond of nursing. The lady was so ill as not to be able to attend to it, and seemed to leave it entirely to the care of a French nurse, who attended to it very badly. She would take it out in the rain, or give it to anybody in the street to hold, while she played at hide-and-seek with the old porter and his wife, who looked to be above seventy; she one day let it fall into the fire and burnt all its poor little hands. There is a porter to all the French houses. Our porter's wife took care of children: we sometimes used to get her in to clean the pans, etc.; then the nurse used to come in also to chat with her and meddle with the things in the kitchen. TRIANONS