or four nights in the week to markets far
and near? and that she turns more pennies
than she can tell? When you want fruit, I
presume you know, without being told, the
narrow street where Celestine, alias the
widow Grandbeau, keeps select grapes,
peaches, and pears, closely packed from vulgar
gaze in an unsuspected outhouse in her
back yard. If she displayed them
obtrusively in her front window, they would only
get dusty, and passing children would cry
for them. I suppose you would require
Leonard, our principal butcher, to put his
surname over his shop-door! You can see
the meat within, that it is of first-rate
quality,—and isn't that enough for any one?
Still, when we do proclaim our names, we do
it in a way that you are not used to at home.
Occasionally we put our titles—as the last-
come stranger is served at an overflowing inn
—into a bed that is much too small for them.
We begin with colossal letters on a narrow
board, and are obliged to taper off with little
ones. LEFEvre Vend à MANger ET A
BOIre, is as much as to say that Mr. THE
FEver sells VICTuals AND DRInk. On
seeing the words LEVEQUE-DUMONT
over an earthenware-shop, you might imagine
that M. Dumont was the dealer in crockery,
and that Leveque was the Christian-name
given him in baptism by his godfather and
godmother; whereas it implies that a Mr.
Leveque is married to a Miss Dumont, and
that the lady's relations, to her fiftieth
cousins, are thereby strictly charged to buy
their fragilities of the aforesaid partnership
concern, Leveque-Dumont, and nowhere else.
French women don't surrender their maiden-names
so tamely as is the wont with English
women. They never part with them entirely,
—not even in death. English ladies are
content to appear as relicts of Soandso, Esquire;
but English gentlemen are not prepared to
be described as relicts too. John Bull
himself, were he married to a Frenchwoman,
would be designated in legal documents, after
her decease, as the widower of Marie Jeanne
Vache. But, we ask ourselves stoically,
"What's in a name? " Some of our grandest
houses have names; but they are evanescent,
flitting with their occupiers or owners,
transferable by the removal of a brass-plate and
three or four screws. Sic transit gloria. The
tenant of Britannia House removes to the
Château de Beaupré; by the agency of the
brazen talisman, Britannia takes possession
of the field, and the Château de Beaupré!
vanishes, to be henceforth a castle in the air,
or flies off further still, to become a Château
en Espagne. But tchut!—silence! Mum's
the word! I shall be letting my pussy out
of her bag too soon, if I drop a hint, as yet,
that we have Britannia or other houses; so
pray consider the preceding sentence as
words whispered to the wind,—as unsaid,
and non arrivées.

Marriages amongst us,—and everybody gets
married, unless strictly-financial reasons counsel
celibacy; brothers and sisters will agree
to remain single in a body, to avoid splitting
a lucrative business into worthless fragments
on the death of their parents—marriages are
contracted on the grand principle of equality,
or equal nullity, of worldly goods. It is no
objection to a match's turning out happy,
that the contracting parties are possessed
simply of a petticoat, a pair of pantaloons, a
flannel vest (for the bride), a patched blouse
(for the bridegroom), and a couple of pair of
wooden shoes; but, if N. has a dowry of a
hundred francs, while M. can only muster a
hundred sous, it is a just cause and a lawful
impediment why those two persons, so
unequally gifted by fortune, should not be
joined together in holy matrimony, until the
disparity of means has been fairly adjusted.
If both parties may be regarded as negative
quantities in certain respects; if the
algebraical sign minus (—) may be supposed to
stand before the names of both lady and
gentleman; then N. may wed with M. Thus, a
man whose right arm is lame and useless,
may address, with serious intentions, without
impropriety, a lady whose left visual organ is
defective; the halt may marry with the
deaf, the pock-marked with the bald, the
asthmatic with the slightly-crippled, the
shaky with the stuttering of speech.

A stout young widow of thirty, without a
liard of fortune, except her energy, her
experience, her effets or bundles, and her
child, gives herself to, and takes for better
and for worse, an old bachelor, whose year-
clock has distinctly struck half-past fifty-one,
and who has a hale constitution, a sack of
ecus, a sound set of teeth, a measure of
market-garden, a bushy head of crisp grey
hair, a weather-tight cottage, a roomy barn,
—all his own property. That is as it should
be; an equal match. Nobody has a word to
say against it. Julie's labour-fund, and
comparative youth, which she brings to the house-
keeping stock, is a fair equivalent to Pierre's
land and money capital; not that he, on his
part, proposes to lead an idle life. And then,
that notion of his for a drop—say a series of
drops—of eau-de-vie, at uncertain intervals
of time—Julie won't allow that; though she
will give him a petit verre when he comes
home benumbed from market, and a gloria in
his coffee at their half-yearly or yearly feast,
when the pig is killed, to furnish bacon for
their soupe-au-lard. He is quite aware of the
impending privation; and his rational man
approves of it, though his sensual man is
inclined to rebel. But reason gets the better of
appetite, because he has calculated, roughly,
the saving it will effect.

Again, Julie's daughter, Ferdinaude, is
far from a burden; she is growing tall
and robust; she will soon be able to
weed, and work in the garden, and even
go to market, to sell, like a woman. She
will nurse the baby, should one take