Page:A French Volunteer of the War of Independence.djvu/258

234 dead;—I have made so many mistakes in paying my tribute of admiration to a living celebrity. This disposition made me regard France as a very absurd set of magic lantern slides. When I had been forty-eight hours in Paris, it seemed to me that of all the persons I recognized, the pretty women had grown old, and the men had changed.

I had always prided myself on the possession of a well-shaped leg, and had always been in favour of knee breeches and stockings, and when I saw everyone wearing trousers, I said to myself, "Has the Revolution made all the young men bow-legged?" Similarly when I saw double or single eye-glasses on the noses of young men of twenty, I said, "This unlucky Revolution has made them all short-sighted." I know that, as a general rule, the public cannot see beyond its nose, but when I noticed that it was merely a freak of fashion and that the young men got themselves up as carefully as Antinous, I thought perhaps they wore eye-glasses in order to better resemble the favourite of