If there was a noise before of screaming postillions and cracked horns, it was nothing to the Babel-like clatter which greets us now. We are in a great court, which Hajji Baba would call the father of diligences. Half a dozen other coaches arrive at the same minute--no light affairs, like your English vehicles, but ponderous machines, containing fifteen passengers inside, more in the cabriolet, and vast towers of luggage on the roof: others are loading: the yard is filled with passengers coming or departing;--bustling porters and screaming commissionaires. These latter seize you as you descend from your place,--twenty cards are thrust into your hand, and as many voices, jabbering with inconceivable swiftness, shriek into your ear, ‘Dis way, sare; are you for ze Otel of Rhin? Hôtel de l’Amirauté!--Hôtel Bristol, sare?--Monsieur, l’Hôtel de Lille? Sacr-rrré nom de Dieu, laissez passer ce petit Monsieur! Ow mosh loggish ave you, sare?’ [Illustration] And now, if you are a stranger in Paris, listen to the words of Titmarsh. If you cannot speak a syllable of French, and love English comfort, clean rooms, breakfasts, and waiters; if you would have plentiful dinners, and are not particular (as how should you be?) concerning wine; if, in this foreign country, you _will_ have your English companions, your porter, your friend, and your brandy-and-water--do not listen to any of these commissioner fellows, but with your best English accent shout out boldly, MEURICE! and straightway a man will step forward to conduct you to the Rue de Rivoli. Here you find apartments at any price: a very neat room, for instance, for three francs daily; an English breakfast of eternal boiled eggs, or grilled ham; a nondescript dinner, profuse but cold; and a society which will rejoice your heart. Here are young gentlemen from the Universities; young merchants on a lark; large families of nine daughters, with fat father and mother; officers of dragoons, and lawyers’ clerks. The last time we dined at Meurice’s we hobbed and nobbed with no less a person than Mr. Moses, the celebrated bailiff of Chancery Lane; Lord Brougham was on his right, and a clergyman’s lady, with a train of white-haired girls, sat on his left, wonderfully taken with the diamond rings of the fascinating stranger! It is, as you will perceive, an admirable way to see Paris, especially if you spend your days reading the English papers at Galignani’s, as many of our foreign tourists do.