The passion for dancing pervades all classes, and even amongst the lowest orders they always find the means of gratifying themselves with that pleasure, but in all their enjoyments down to the public-houses in the worst quarters of Paris, there is a degree of decorum which surprises an Englishman accustomed to the extreme grossness of similar classes in our own country.  Determined to see as much of life as I could in all its stages during a carnival, accompanied by a countryman I visited many of the lowest order of wine houses where balls were going forward; the only payment required for entrance was the purchase of a bottle of wine, costing six sous.  We expected to see a good deal of uproarious mirth and all kinds of pranks going forward, but were quite astonished to find the order that prevailed; the men appeared as if they were in such a hurry for a dance that they had not waited until they washed their hands and faces, but had just come directly from their work, although several of them had slipped on masquerade dresses; the women were cleaner (I suspect they were not of the most immaculate description), and were amusing themselves with quadrilles and waltzes alternately.  Being of course very differently attired from the rest of the assemblage, we were very conspicuous, but they took no notice of us whatever; if they happened to run against us whilst waltzing and whirling about, they always said “Je vous ’mande pardon, Monsieur,” and nothing farther.  We observed that the men paid for the musicians two sous each dance and the women one, and we came away rather disappointed at finding things so much more insipid than we expected; we visited several houses of the same description and found the same sort of scene going forward in them all.  The working people in Paris are extremely frugal in their mode of living; bread being full seven-eighths of their food, what they eat with it varies according to the season; if in summer, mostly such fruit as happens to be ripe, and perhaps once in the day they take a bit of soft white-looking cheese with their bread.  In winter they often add instead, a little morsel of pork or bacon, but more frequently stewed pears or roasted apples.  On Sundays they always put the pot-au-feu, as they call it, which means that they make soup, or literally translated, that they put the pot on the fire.  Henry IV declared that he should not feel satisfied until he had so ameliorated the condition of the poor, that every peasant should be able to have a fowl in his pot every Sunday; had he not suddenly been cut off by assassination, he might have lived to have seen his benevolent wish accomplished.  Many of the wives of the working people contrive to muster some soup for their husbands when they get home at night, and almost all manage to have a little wine in the course of the day.  On the Sunday in the summer time they contrive to have a degree of pleasure, and go to one of the houses round Paris called guinguettes, something in