holding out her arm. So, laying down my hat, I took hold of her fingers in one hand, and applied the two forefingers of my other to the artery.

Would to heaven! my dear Eugenius, thou hadst passed by, and beheld me sitting in my black coat, and in my lackadaisical manner, counting the throbs of it, one by one, with as much true devotion as if I had been watching the critical ebb or flow of her fever! How wouldst thou have laughed and moralized upon my new profession! and thou shouldst have laughed and moralized on. Trust me, my dear Eugenius, I should have said, worse occupations in this world than feeling a woman's pulse." But a grisette's! thou wouldst have said, and in an open shop, Yorick!

66 There are

So much the better: for when my views are direct, Eugenius,

I care not if all the world saw me feel it.

her husband coming
pected from a back-parlor into
the shop, put me a little out
in my reckoning. 'Twas no-
body but her husband, she
Monsieur is so good, quoth
give himself the trouble of

she, as he passed by us, as to 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 walked 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
the shop not resting in
the husband, he seldom
comes there: in some
dark and dismal room
behind he sits commerce-
less in his thrum night-
cap, the same rough son
of Nature that Nature
left him.

The genius of a peo

ple 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. Apropos, said I, I want a couple

once. It will not do, said I, shaking my head a little. No, said she, doing the same thing.