it into its head to come; she can do the
housework—approximately to its normal
style—during any business absence on the part
of her mother; for, as to giving birth to a
child, that would be an affair of three or
four days, at the most. In short, young
Ferdinaude's present and contingent value
has been appraised like everything else—
before the hymeneal chain was riveted. The
notary made all right first, in black and
white, with proper stamps and signatures.
In the event of Pierre's regrettable decease
(the twenty years' difference is not forgotten
by either party as an element in their estimates),
Julie is to enjoy all Pierre's heritable
possessions for the term of her natural life,
even if she do not present him with an heir;
and if she do, things of course will go on
smoothly. See Articles numbered with various
integers in the Code Napoléon. I don't
know, but it strikes me that Pierre and
Julie have just as fair a prospect of worldly
happiness as the romantic youth and maiden
who got married at Gretna Green before
their united ages amounted to thirty-nine,—
or as the still more romantic Parisian pair
who, because their several parents could not
agree about dots, and because no marriage
could take place without dots, bought fifty
centimes worth of charcoal, and stifled
themselves in a close chamber. I mean shortly
to visit Pierre and Julie, to see how prudential
matrimony works; besides, it is understood
that I am to set up the young beginners
with a plantation of that precocious rhubarb
whose produce sells so well in the neighbouring
well-frequented watering-place. Surely it
conduces to happiness to find, as Pierre and
Julie will, your substance increasing from
day to day.

As I said, not only portionless couples, or
those whose propertyometer stands at zero,
marry, after their kind, but even those
negatived-quantitied individuals whose
personal and possessive qualifications place them
at several degrees below zero. And they
increase and multiply. What is it to them,
how many children they have? When there
is bread in the house, the youngsters eat it;
when there is none, they go round the
town, at soup-and-supper-time, with a little
earthen pot or begging-jug, to receive a
cupful of broth, or a cold potato, or a boiled
carrot, or a bit of bread; it is of no use
giving them sous, for the urchins love lollypops
and gingerbreads, as well as their
richers; and that is the way hundreds of
French children are brought up elsewhere,
and not here alone. At the age when babes
take to running under horses' heels and
cartwheels, they are sent for a portion of the day
to the Salle d'Asile or Infant School; when
a little older, it is their fault, or that of their
parents, if they do not get some little schooling
and preparatory rasping off of their
roughest outside husk, from the SÅ“urs and
the Frères, whose merits—those of the
former especially—demand injustice a tribute
of respect, though a Protestant Englishman
will not accord with all their tendencies.
As to the lodging and wardrobe of these
Champis children—these sons and daughters
of the town, whose maintenance is that of
the sparrow or the houseless cur—their
sleeping-holes and their attire of rags are
often and often such as a lady would
weep to see her lap-dog, her pig, or her
monkey, condemned to. " A good, hardy
mode of bringing up! " old-fashioned nurses
may think fit to observe. Many die,
needs not to be said; those that survive are
as tough as rhinoceros'-hide. When they
make their first communion, at about the age
of ten or twelve, they put on a decent dress
for the first time in their lives—little coats
and trousers for the boys, white frocks and
veils for the girls, given by the town and by
charitable individuals. Old clothes devoted
to smarting-up indigent juvenile communicants,
are regarded as a Catholic oblation and
sacrifice, from however heretical a donor they
may come. It was certainly worth the value
of one of my faded and threadbare waistcoats
(converted into a jacket by the addition
of sleeves), to observe which of the two,
himself or his mamma, most admired a certain
youngster's appearance, as he strutted off in
file to church. After the first communion
comes work, work, work; with bread when
it can be had, and no bread when it cannot.
At twenty-one follows the conscription. Those
who are not drawn, or rather who do not
draw themselves, may sell themselves as
substitutes. What hardship is there in a
soldier's life (putting out of sight the chance
of being killed) for such a set of conscripts
as these? With two unfailing meals a day,
besides coffee, sugar, and other little extras,
with a warm smart uniform, with a lodging
in a solid roomy barrack, or even in a snug
hut at the now- demolished camp of Boulogne,
our providence-fed lad is a prince to what
he has been. Can we wonder that his
military reminiscences linger pleasantly in
after days, if he quit the service when his
term is expired? If he has ambition, good
conduct, and a mastery of the alphabet and
the Arabic numerals, he has a career before
him. The rank of corporal and serjeant will
lead him upwards. Is it not an incalculable
element in the military strength of France
that she thus opens a free field to every
capacity? The ragamuffin boy, the sou-less
bread-less, shirt-less progeny of our town—
for his actual parents have only a fractional
right to property in him—our scrap-fed child
whom we have nurtured on offal odds and
ends, and christianised in apparel with cast-
off vestments, may one day return with
glittering epaulettes, a cross on his breast, and a
mounted orderly behind him. Such are our
contributions towards the maintenance of the
national military glory.

But I must add that our well-to-do people