34. The Husband. Paris

I HAD counted twenty pulsations, and was going on fast towards the fortieth, when her husband coming unexpected from a back parlor into the shop, put me a little out of my reckoning.-'T was nobody but her husband, she said-so I began a fresh score.-Monsieur is so good, quoth she, as he pass'd by us, as to give himself the trouble of feeling my pulse.-The husband took off his hat, and making me a bow, said, I did him too much honor-and having said that, he put on his hat and walk'd out.

Good God! said I to myself, as he went out-and can this man be the husband of this woman!

Let it not torment the few who know what must have been the grounds of this exclamation, if I explain it to those who do not.

In London a shopkeeper and a shopkeeper's wife seem to be one bone and one flesh: in the several endowments of mind and body, sometimes the one, sometimes the other has it, so as in general to be upon a par, and to tally with each other as nearly as man and wife need to do.

In Paris, there are scarce two orders of beings more different: for the legislative and executive powers of the shop not resting in the husband, he seldom comes there-in some dark and dismal room behind, he sits commerceless in his thrum nightcap, the same rough son of Nature that Nature left him.

The genius of a people where nothing but the monarchy is salique, having ceded this department, with sundry others, totally to the women-by a continual higgling with customers of all ranks and sizes from morning to night, like so many rough pebbles shook long together in a bag, by amicable collisions, they have worn down their asperities and sharp angles, and not only become round and smooth, but will receive, some of them, a polish like a brilliant.-Monsieur le Mari is little better than the stone under your foot.-

-Surely-surely, man! it is not good for thee to sit alone-thou wast made for social intercourse and gentle greetings, and this improvement of our natures from it, I appeal to, as my evidence.

-And how does it beat, Monsieur? said she.-With all the benignity, said I, looking quietly in her eyes, that I expected.-She was going to say something civil in return-but the lad came into the shop with the gloves.-A propos, said I, I want a couple of pair myself.