Page:Reminisences of Captain Gronow.djvu/131

Rh me he was by descent an Englishman; though he had been born in Paris, and had really never quitted France. He approached me, saying, "Sir, I am delighted to see an English officer in Paris, and you are the first I have yet met with." He talked about the battle of Waterloo, and gave me some useful directions concerning restaurants and cafés. Along the Boulevards were handsome houses, isolated, with gardens interspersed, and the roads were bordered on both sides with stately, spreading trees, some of them probably a hundred years old. There was but an imperfect pavement, the stepping-stones of which were adapted to display the Parisian female ankle and boot in all their calculated coquetry; and the road showed nothing but mother earth, in the middle of which a dirty gutter served to convey the impurities of the city to the river. The people in the streets appeared sulky and stupefied: here and there I noticed groups of the higher classes evidently discussing the events of the moment.

How strange humanity would look in our day in the costume of the first Empire. The ladies wore very scanty and short skirts, which left little or no waist; their bonnets were of