work completed, trudging back with their carts and baskets to their distant country home. There are such workers in that frivolous and unthinking France, which we are apt, from a superficial view only, to believe wholly given over to indolence and dissipation. When you learn with what patient labor these creatures earn their daily bread, you are no longer inclined to lie, mentally denouncing them for disturbing your morning nap; you will, now and then, spend spare pennies upon their wares, and not regret it; for sympathy with the trials of the lowly ennobles, as well as gratifies, the right-feeling man.

Exactly at the hour announced we sat down to a thoroughly French provincial breakfast, in a long salle à manger, quite as dark and heavy and old-fashioned as our chamber had been. There was no coffee or tea, and no getting either; every one had wine, and excellent Bordeaux it was. We were served with soup, sar

cheese, and fruit. The people at table were silent, and devoted themselves assiduously to the occupation immediately pertinent; it was in striking contrast with the Parisian table, where there is an incessant talking, and an easy making of acquaintances. On leaving the table we adjourned, with the rest, to the neighboring café, which was, at noon, full to overflowing, it being the custom to drink and play dominoes, cards, and billiards for a while after the morning meal. Here were the officers of the regiment which was posted at Nantes, in full military costume, lazily pompous and idly vain, discussing, with their after-breakfast potations, the last review, or the probability of a war with Prussia; merchants making contracts, and inquiring the last news of the Paris markets, over their hock and absinthe; dandies of the provincial sort-gaudy and boisterous-talking over the gossip of the prefect's ball, or the lat

men were promenading to and fro on the square, which is the favorite resort of the business men, out of their counting-house hours; even so early in the morning there were groups sitting under the awnings in front of the cafés, sipping café au cognac, and that most baleful but apparently fascinating beverage, absinthe; while every now and then street hawkers would go by, screeching their wares at the top of their lungs, and making the whole square ring with their various and discordant cries. The traveler who awakes on his first morning in Parisespecially if he be of an economical habit, and lodges in the Latin quarter-is almost inclined to imagine himself in a vast lunatic asylum. He is appalled by a chorus of weird shrieks and cries, many-keyed and discordant, loud and feeble, far and near; when, looking out the window, he is surprised to find these startling sounds issuing from hard-featured coster-mongers or dapper little peasant women, who are busily engaged in selling their pears and arti-dines, sole, chops, filet de bœuf, vegetables, chokes, cherries and potatoes. But, in this respect, Nantes quite outdoes the great metropolis; and I observed that, at Nantes, nearly all the hawkers were women, and that each had chosen a sort of strange tune or strain, peculiar to herself, which she sung without change day after day. It would puzzle the most accomplished of French linguists, if he did not have a peep into their baskets, to find out from their cries what they were attempting to sell. These women, who, like the market - people, were mostly from the neighboring rural districts, were usually dressed with scrupulous neatness, their long coifs white and shining with starch, and their aprons, fresh from the iron, carefully tied with long, wide strings which fell behind; they had cheerful, hardy, sun-burnt, but rather keen and shrewish countenances, which seemed to say, "Here's for a bargain, and if you don't buy, I'll bite ye!" Peculiarly strange were the cries of the shrimp and sardine women, forest mariage de convenance; clerks and tradesthe reader need hardly be told that Nantes is men, idlers and foreigners, each indulging in the great sardine emporium of the world, that whatever game or potable best suited his taste. delicious fish being caught in the Bay of Biscay A most dreary life, we thought, this provincial near by, and preserved by the large establish- café existence. In Paris the café frequenter ments of the Breton capital. The sardine wo- has some distraction in the brilliant surroundmen sell them fresh, or as nearly fresh as pos-ings-in the gay crowd collected about the sible for so very delicate is the fish that it is tables, the continuous tide of men and women necessary to salt it as soon as it is caught; and which passes unceasingly along the boulevard, their cry is a wild, high-keyed shriek, and fair- the incidents constantly occurring, the sparkly startles you, it is so seemingly painful. Prob-ling outer life of the splendid city; but here, at ably there are no harder-working people in the Nantes, the café life is but a dull and empty world than these Breton peasant women, whose iteration, without a spark of the excitement cries distract one in the early morning. Usual- which alone would seem to make such a resort ly the wives and daughters of suburban farm-tolerable. Yet in the early morning, at high ers, they aid in the tilling and planting of the ground; tend the crops during their growth; gather the fruit and vegetables when they are ripe; load their little carts or heavy baskets, bring them into town, and go hour after hour over the stony streets until they have completed their extensive round, screaming at the top of their lungs, and gathering a few sous with difficulty here and there; then, their hard day's

noon, and from before sundown till midnight, the cafés are full; you see the same faces there day after day, the same games, the same occupations and choice of beverages; husbands deserting their homes, and bachelors avoiding the marriage tie, in order to enjoy the monotonous pleasures, the attractions of which no stranger, at least, can discover. The Nantes merchant, although shrewd and active when he

is at his warehouse, leads a very easy, indolent of Notre Dame, its great portals crowded with existence. He rises at nine, takes a cup of Scriptural bass-reliefs, and its broken stones and coffee, and goes to his counting-room. He pillars-the lasting mementoes of the ferocious, stays there some two hours, reading his letters, desperate men of '93; the curious old castle, arranging his business, and giving his directions a mosaic of the Middle and the Modern Ages, for the day. Between eleven and twelve he re- where we saw the room-now used as an armturns home to breakfast; he leaves the break-ory, and filled to the roof with Chassepots-in fast-table for the café, or his club. It is two o'clock before he returns to the counting-room; and at three you will find him on the bourse. Having finished the financial gossip of the bourse, he does not return to his counting-room; but either takes a walk or a drive, promenades with a friend on the square, drops in at the café to read the Paris papers, or hastens to his club to meet his cronies at the whist or picquet table. His favorite aim is to amass enough upon which to retire from business, and to be able to do nothing during the latter half of his life; to have his meals at a restaurant, his spare moneyed in observing the manners and customs, the for cigars and the café, for the theatre and concerts; to have it in his power to run up to Paris now and then, and to have his small country seat on the sea-shore, or à la campagne, seems to be the limit of his ambition.

which Henry the Fourth signed the Edict of Nantes; the gloomy old building where the victims of the Revolution were confined, and awaited in the dark and damp dungeons their inevitable doom-among them the ninety priests who were drowned in the river opposite; the quaint little house honored by royalists as the hidingplace of the Duchess De Berri-these afforded us many an hour of interest and pleasure. But, as men and women in this world are far more curious respecting men and women than the places they inhabit, our chief pleasure consist

At

traditions, superstitions, and opinions of this population, far away from the centres of civilization, and cleaving to those ideas which to us seem, in this age, amusingly ill placed. the east end of the city, just beyond the catheWe had gone to Nantes to see and study dral, is a long and pleasant avenue, shaded by society far from the much-traveled routes; and umbrageous trees, and reached by a broad flight our week there was not wanting in many in- of steps at either end. The houses which face teresting experiences. We wandered with de-it are old, lofty, and substantially built. Here light about the old Breton town, unharassed by live the descendants of the proud old Breton commissionaires, able to dispense with guides aristocracy-perhaps the haughtiest and most both human and red-bound, and without meet-exclusive in the world. Here they live on, ing at every turn a group of sight-seers "doing" | year after year, associating only with each oththe town according to Murray. We sauntered er, seldom appearing in the outer world, leadalong the quays of the Loire, where the sun, ing an almost hermit-like existence, devoted even in October, beat remorselessly down upon children of the Romish Church, looking with us; and observed the curious river life—the ineffable contempt on the Emperor and all his sailors in their broad hats, the coast-wise vessels adherents, observing with pious veneration the with their freights, the ugly little steamers ply-anniversary of the death of Louis XVI., awaiting up and down the river. We took the huge flat ferry-boat, and for a sou crossed the rapid river, and betook ourselves into the neighboring country, where we found the oddest little broken-down villages, with their long roofs almost touching the ground, their one-sided, ancient churches, and their straggling, rickety, single street; found, here and there, Druidical stones and Roman remains; rambled along the rustic roads for many miles, having on either side of us a vast expanse of vineyards, their fruit just now yielded up, extending as far as eye could reach; and observed that every where the women were the hardest workers, and had the brawniest arms, and seemed far more patient and enduring than their lords. We went back to the city over the many bridges which span the islands of the Loire, joining together the distant banks; and on these islands saw many sorrowful sights of want and filth, and the savageness of an unlettered people which only earns its bread, and scantily that; for these islands, once beautiful in verdure and fertility, as are those further up the river, are now thickly populated, and with the poorest and worst classes of the city. The cathedral, with its huge square towers, not unlike those

ing the return of the Bourbons to the throne, and condoling with each other, gloomily longing for the days that are gone. There—if you can but get a glimpse of this fossil society-you will find, faithfully preserved, that grand politeness and chivalrous courtesy which were so famous in the court life of the last century; a ceremonious demeanor which contrasts oddly with the society of the age in which we live. This Bourbon aristocracy takes no part in the affairs of the world around it; eschews politics and official balls; makes no new acquaintance; and passes, year after year, a monotonous, useless, and wholly vain existence. In one respect alone do they appear to have departed from the precepts of their fathers. Many of them are far from wealthy-for there have been, malheureusement, revolutions—and the inheritors of the past have been plundered and driven from ancient patrimonies by the claimants of the future; yet wealth is necessary to support their position in their own circle of society. These haughty Bourbon Catholics, therefore, are fain to marry their sons and daughters to the sons and daughters of the coarse-blooded but wellto-do merchants of the western quarter. Marriages of this sort are frequently concluded, oft

en with a sad result.

room were to be found newspapers and light reading matter, in another billiard-tables, in a third a spacious restaurant or a café, in nearly every one card-tables and facilities for gaming. Attached to the club was a finely frescoed, cozy little concert hall, with a covered gallery running round three sides, supported by graceful pillars; the fourth side was taken up by a taste

The young aristocrat of | pliance of luxury and comfort; the whole inthe Cour St. Pierre marries the merchant's vited to indolence and dozy idleness. In one daughter from the Cour Cambronne, and henceforth she is a stranger to her father's house. The parents-having granted their child an enormous dot-are doomed to neglect, to the contempt of the son-in-law and his family, and even to the slights of their own aristocratic daughter. As soon as she arrives in her new home she is urged to avoid all her old friends and acquaintances, and even to forget her parents and broth-ful stage, upon which stood a grand piano. ers and sisters; and too often the advice is effective, accompanied as it is by menaces and perpetual persecution.

Here, twice a month, classical concerts were given by notable artists, to which the members were admitted free, and for which each member The mercantile community, which resides for was supplied with two cards for his lady friends. the most part at the western end of the city, is We could not help observing, however, that the hardly more social and hospitable than the great attraction of the club was the gambling; proud old aristocracy which contemns it. To that vice, with other ancient customs, continustrangers they are uncommunicative and slowing to be the fashion in that community. The to make social advances. They are purse- larger part of the frequenters of the club were proud, as the others are family-proud. They at the tables; young men, with an ambition to move in their own circles, have their peculiar be considered "sports," deep in the cards, and habits and pleasures, and pass their lives in a old white-headed men looking on approvingly, certain groove, with little variety or excitement. and often participating in the game. The club, They leave town with the first signs of approach- in the Breton towns, is merely the trysting place ing spring, their houses are closed, and they for gossip and gambling; and so rooted is the return only when the frosts and bleak storms custom of playing for money that one not only of November warn them that the country will hears, in the best society, no condemnation of soon be insupportable. Unlike the mercantile it, but it is rare that a ball or party is given in class of England, and, indeed, of most civilized which a room is not set apart and supplied with countries, they show little public spirit; inven- cards, dominoes, and tables, for this special tion, the triumphs of science, educational im- purpose. A ball at the palace of the prefect is provement, politics, the sanitary, moral, and one of the few events which break the monotony material condition of their city, seem to have of drowsy provincial life; and there, perhaps, but little interest for them. The different mem- you may best observe this provincial society, bers of the family have each their daily amuse- which has so obstinately preserved the customs ments and duties, and these seem seldom to of times gone by. The invitations are freely unite the family together. The father's daily given, and the company, wanting only in the life has already been described; that of the son old Bourbon noblesse, presents a mosaic of varidiffers little from it; but he has his own boon ous classes, and a fair illustration of the comcompanions, his own club and café, his own munity. Being offered a card for one of these separate amusements, which, of course, take occasions, we seized the opportunity to go. him in a different direction from that pursued by The spacious salons of the prefecture were dazthe elder. The mother and daughter devote zlingly lighted by thousands of candles, and the themselves but little to household cares, which company had mostly assembled when we arare undertaken by the bonnes-who, if there rived. After saluting the prefect and his lady are young children, have nearly or quite all the we passed on and observed the throng of procare of them. The ladies, meanwhile, are de- vincial fashionables. Around the long salon voting themselves to dress and society; man- were two ranges of seats, one above and behind aging how to save enough here and there to the other. Along the upper seats sat, in a long enable them to meet the demands of the tailleur row, the mères de famille, pompous and stately and the milliner; living closely at home, so as old ladies with white curls, and dressed with to shine abroad; and having their round of du- profuse elegance. In the seats below them sat ties and pleasures quite distinct from those of their daughters, over whom they were keeping the male members of the family. Among other a strict and vigilant watch. A gentleman who resorts we visited one of the clubs frequented wished to dance with a young lady had no need by the wealthier class, called the "Société des of an introduction; it was his duty to approach, Beaux Arts." Instead of the plain and sub- salute the mother, and request her permission stantial elegance of the English clubs, the build- to dance with the daughter. This obtained, ing of the "Beaux Arts" was most gaudily and and the young lady also assenting, they would luxuriously decorated. You entered a spacious go upon the floor; while, all through the dance, hall, brilliantly lighted, and decorated with pil- the dowager would sit with her eyes riveted lars, statues, and flowers; the panelings gild-upon the couple, and sharply scan their every ed, and a richly carpeted oaken staircase lead-look and movement. This gave us a hint of ing to the rooms above. The apartments used the predominating rule in French provincial sofor club purposes were provided with every ap-ciety, the strict separation of the sexes in youth.

tlements. The tide of civilization seems to have swept by Nantes, and to have left there but few vestiges of its passage. Ignorange and superstition still cling to it, and dominate it. Even Protestantism, which has timidly penetrated into this strong-hold of the old Church, has caught the drowsy influence of the place, and makes no progress. A week was long enough to stay, and we were glad to get back to Paris, and find ourselves once more in a wideawake city, frivolously brilliant though it was.

Paris is fast outgrowing that strange custom, | the old capital, and multiplying with a rapidity the relic of less civilized times, which has pro- | which reminds one of our own far Western setduced so much connubial misery, which makes each sex suspicious of the other, teaches the young men to live dissolute and shameful lives, and the young women to look upon their future lords as conspirators against their honor; but in Brittany the custom still flourishes, and the rule of separation is still inexorable. No young lady, or even, for that matter, no lady of doubtful age, unmarried, goes from home alone. Either her mamma, some elderly relative, or a bonne accompanies her to the shops, or to take her music and drawing lessons. Never, by any chance, is she left alone for a moment with a gentleman. Even when betrothed-even when another week will find her wedded-her lover's visits are paid, his soft speeches uttered, in presence of the father or mother, or both. The mariage de convenance, which at Paris seems in a decline, still prevails every where in the provinces. All things are arranged through that universal diplomat of domestic life, the notary, excepting that in rural Brittany the village tailor, according to a very ancient usage, is intrusted with the marriage negotiations.

The lower classes at Nantes are as easy going, as fond of their few amusements, as unimpressible-more so, if possible-by modern ideas, as their social superiors. Their day's work done, their steps tend toward the cabarets, where they spend their earnings on the hot white wines of the district; then, in parties of a dozen, they will interlock arms and go bawling through the streets till far into the night. On Sundays they attire themselves in their best suits, and ramble into the country, or sail or row on the river, or repair to some rustic inn, where they dance, drink, and gamble the livelong day. Very few can read or write, none seem to be ambitious to better their condition. If they earn enough to satisfy their pleasures, pour passer le temps, after work is over, they are quite content. Drunkenness is more frequently met with than in Paris; there are certain streets in Nantes where, go when you may, you are certain of seeing miserable people reeling about, or lying stupefied at the doors and on the sidewalks. Beggary is common, and the beggars importunate. The ragged little urchins of the street will follow you square after square, running after you, and with piteous accents implore you for one petit sou; yet, if you give them none, will go skipping off singing some rude song, or cutting such capers as only a French gamin can. The Breton peasant, while naturally fierce and passionate, has a great capacity for keeping his temper, and brawls are happily few and far be

tween.

There is no more striking proof of the stagnant condition of Brittany than the fact that the population of Nantes has decreased within three years from 113,000 to 111,000 inhabitants. Thirty miles below, where the Loire empties its broad stream into the stormy Bay of Biscay, a town is growing up, draining the life out of

CHOOSE.

My tender thoughts go forth, beloved,
Upon the pleasant morning hours,
With songs of mated birds and sighs
From virgin hearts of opening flowers.
Full laden with love's daintiest store,
Each smallest thought should come to thee,
As from the jasmine's hidden cell
Flies home the richly burdened bee.

My joyous thoughts go forth, beloved,
Upon the golden airs of noon,
With languid sweets from roses rare
That flush and faint through ardent June,
With all the swiftness of the streams
That fling out laughter as they run,
With all the brightness of the day,
With all the passion of the sun.
But when along the cloud-hung west
The purple lights grow pale and die-
When waves of sunshine roll no more,
And all one shade the corn-fields lie-
When twilight veils the hills, and gives
A deeper mystery to the sea-
Then, O beloved! my saddened heart

Yearns through the distance unto thee.
And when the winds come o'er the sands
To sweep my lonely garden through,
To bow the saintly lily's head,

And spill the violet's cup of dew

And when they higher mount, and beat
The elm's long arms against the eaves,
Troubling the robin in its nest,
And making tumult in the leaves-
Then in the dusk I seem to hear
Strange sounds and whisperings of dread,
And every murmur in the grass
Seems some unfriendly spirit's tread.
I shrink within the shadowed porch,
A nameless fear oppresseth me-
Oh, then my heart, like some lost child,
Calls through the darkness unto thee!
So, dear, of all my life of love,
Choose thou the best and sweetest part:
The glow of day, or gloom of night;
The pride or terror of my heart;
The glad, exultant hope that fills
The morning with its joyous strain,
Or twilight's haunted loneliness,
That stretches out its arms in vain.
Would sigh or carol move thee most?
And were thy tenderest kiss bestowed
On eyes that droop with tears, or lips
With careless laughter overflowed?
So questions, love, the foolish heart
That would thy secret choice divine;
Yet idly questions, knowing well
Thou canst not choose, since all is thine.

A PILOT'S WIFE.