_May 14th._--About this time a little circumstance happened which shows
the French inconsistency. We wanted a jack put up in the kitchen. The
mason and his boy came first, but not finding the blacksmith there,
they went away; then came the blacksmith and his boy, but not finding
the mason, they went away. After going on in this way for some time,
they at last all met. The mason then took out of a paper bag some
delicate-looking white powder, which, after mixing into a paste, he
layed with great care on to a fine silver trowel, and then proceeded to
dab it on to the wall with his fingers.
_May 15th._--We now began to be rather surprised that the clothes we
had left at Passy, and which the porter said he would send directly,
had not arrived. Stephens, our foreign courier, who spoke English, was
therefore despatched to bring them. We afterwards found that, so far
from knowing a person to send them by, the porter had consulted with
Stephens and asked him if he knew of any person; so that we might have
waited long for our clothes if we had trusted to the porter's word.
The French are very fond of making promises, but not quite so fond of
performing them; this we found to be the case with our house: one of
our beds broke down several times; some rooms wanted tables, some jugs,
some carpets, and all window-curtains--so that you could see across the
yard from one room to another; they found it very easy to promise all
these things, but we waited many a week before we got one. The English
family above us had one baby of a few months old, called Angelica
Ellen, which we were very fond of nursing. The lady was so ill as not
to be able to attend to it, and seemed to leave it entirely to the care
of a French nurse, who attended to it very badly. She would take it out
in the rain, or give it to anybody in the street to hold, while she
played at hide-and-seek with the old porter and his wife, who looked to
be above seventy; she one day let it fall into the fire and burnt all
its poor little hands. There is a porter to all the French houses. Our
porter's wife took care of children: we sometimes used to get her in to
clean the pans, etc.; then the nurse used to come in also to chat with
her and meddle with the things in the kitchen.