The Paris Sketch Book of Mr. M. A. TitmarshThackeray, William Makepeace
General
The Paris Sketch Book of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh
Thackeray, William Makepeace
Paris (France) -- Description and travel
It is a strange, mongrel, merry place, this town of Boulogne; the
little French fishermen’s children are beautiful, and the little French
soldiers, four feet high, red-breeched, with huge pompons on their
caps, and brown faces, and clear sharp eyes, look, for all their
littleness, far more military and more intelligent than the heavy louts
one has seen swaggering about the garrison towns in England. Yonder go
a crowd of bare-legged fishermen; there is the town idiot, mocking a
woman who is screaming “Fleuve du Tage,” at an inn-window, to a harp,
and there are the little gamins mocking HIM. Lo! these seven young
ladies, with red hair and green veils, they are from neighboring
Albion, and going to bathe. Here comes three Englishmen, habitués
evidently of the place,—dandy specimens of our countrymen: one wears a
marine dress, another has a shooting dress, a third has a blouse and a
pair of guiltless spurs—all have as much hair on the face as nature or
art can supply, and all wear their hats very much on one side. Believe
me, there is on the face of this world no scamp like an English one, no
blackguard like one of these half-gentlemen, so mean, so low, so
vulgar,—so ludicrously ignorant and conceited, so desperately heartless
and depraved.
But why, my dear sir, get into a passion?—Take things coolly. As the
poet has observed, “Those only is gentlemen who behave as sich;” with
such, then, consort, be they cobblers or dukes. Don’t give us, cries
the patriotic reader, any abuse of our fellow-countrymen (anybody else
can do that), but rather continue in that good-humored, facetious,
descriptive style with which your letter has commenced.—Your remark,
sir, is perfectly just, and does honor to your head and excellent
heart.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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