There are drinkers of the deadly absinthe, and occasionally indulgers in the more immediate but less fearful brandy, but they are rare. The absinthe drinkers are, as a rule, literary men, reformers, and the long-haired visionaries who have a notion that in stimulants there is inspiration, and the reckless ones who hold that the more they get out of life in ten minutes the more they enjoy. They are the men who invite the guillotine, and walk to the scaffold with great alacrity, and shout "Vive La France," in the most picturesque and absurd manner. The devotee of absinthe drinks it as a part of his social system, and generally dies of softening of the brain at about thirty-five. He thinks he has a good time, but he does not. [Sidenote: THE WATER OF PARIS.] There are low people who stupefy themselves with cheap brandy, but they are not common. The Frenchman does not take kindly to the fierce stimulant so common across the channel, and the amount of raw whisky consumed each day by the average whisky-drinking American would fill him with astonishment. He cannot comprehend it at all, and regards such a man as a brute. Possibly he is not very much out of the way. I, for one, quite agree with him. And when it comes to wine he is very moderate. There is very little alcohol in the red wine he drinks, so little that Tibbitts, after taking a glass of it, remarked that he had known water in America that was more exhilarating. And that wine, mild as it is, he dilutes fully one-half with water, and sips it very slowly. In an evening he consumes not more than a pint of it, getting out of that pint about as much stimulation as is held in one drink of American sod-corn whisky. But it suffices him. He sits and laughs and talks just as well over this mild swash as the American does over his fiery, bowel-burning, stomach-destroying, brain-shriveling liquor, and a great deal more, for he enjoys himself, and the American does not. At least, so I have been informed. The use of wine is universal. It is in the bed-room in the morning, on the table at twelve o'clock breakfast, it is taken at dinner at six o'clock, and during the evening till bed-time. The water of Paris is very bad; at least, so all Parisians tell you, though I cannot see why it should be. I tasted it several times, and I saw no especial difference between Paris water and any other, except, as they do not use ice, it does get rather insipid in the Summer, when the thermometer reaches ninety-five. But there is a superstition prevalent that it is unhealthy, and hence it is never used as a beverage unless it is qualified. The Frenchman drops a lump of sugar in it when he takes it raw, though, as a rule, wine is used as a corrective.