If There Were Five Hundred Dishes At Table, A Frenchman Will Eat
Of All Of Them, And Then Complain He Has No Appetite.
This I have
several times remarked.
A friend of mine gained a considerable
wager upon an experiment of this kind: the petit maitre ate of
fourteen different plats, besides the dessert; then disparaged
the cook, declaring he was no better than a marmiton, or
turnspit.
The French have the most ridiculous fondness for their hair, and
this I believe they inherit from their remote ancestors. The
first race of French kings were distinguished by their long hair,
and certainly the people of this country consider it as an
indispensible ornament. A Frenchman will sooner part with his
religion than with his hair, which, indeed, no consideration will
induce him to forego. I know a gentleman afflicted with a
continual head-ach, and a defluxion on his eyes, who was told by
his physician that the best chance he had for being cured, would
be to have his head close shaved, and bathed every day in cold
water. "How (cried he) cut my hair? Mr. Doctor, your most humble
servant!" He dismissed his physician, lost his eye-sight, and
almost his senses, and is now led about with his hair in a bag,
and a piece of green silk hanging like a screen before his face.
Count Saxe, and other military writers have demonstrated the
absurdity of a soldier's wearing a long head of hair;
nevertheless, every soldier in this country wears a long queue,
which makes a delicate mark on his white cloathing; and this
ridiculous foppery has descended even to the lowest class of
people. The decrotteur, who cleans your shoes at the corner of
the Pont Neuf, has a tail of this kind hanging down to his rump,
and even the peasant who drives an ass loaded with dung, wears
his hair en queue, though, perhaps, he has neither shirt nor
breeches. This is the ornament upon which he bestows much time
and pains, and in the exhibition of which he finds full
gratification for his vanity. Considering the harsh features of
the common people in this country, their diminutive stature,
their grimaces, and that long appendage, they have no small
resemblance to large baboons walking upright; and perhaps this
similitude has helped to entail upon them the ridicule of their
neighbours.
A French friend tires out your patience with long visits; and,
far from taking the most palpable hints to withdraw, when he
perceives you uneasy he observes you are low-spirited, and
therefore he will keep you company. This perseverance shews that
he must either be void of penetration, or that his disposition
must be truly diabolical. Rather than be tormented with such a
fiend, a man had better turn him out of doors, even though at the
hazard of being run thro' the body.
The French are generally counted insincere, and taxed with want
of generosity. But I think these reproaches are not well founded.
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