common fellows and filles publiques, who, in hired court-dresses, with beauty-plasters on their rouged faces, parodied the aristocratic manners of the preceding régime, gave themselves grand Carlist titles, and fanned and spread themselves[1] in such courtly style that I involuntarily recalled the dignified festivities which I as a boy had the honour of beholding from the upper gallery, there being only this difference, that the poissardes or fishwives of Paris spoke better French than the cavaliers and noble ladies of my native land.[2]
To do justice to the latter, I confess that the Bœuf Gras or fatted ox of this year would not have caused the least sensation or attracted any attention in Germany. A German would have laughed at the insignificant creature whose im-
- ↑ "Und sich dabe so hoffährtig fächerten und spreizten." French "Se pavanaient avec des mimes de cœur." The American term "to spread oneself" expresses to perfection both the French se pavaner, "to peacock," and the German spreizen.—Translator.
- ↑ A fade joke which Heine repeats in all his prose works, so that it appears to have been to him an endless joy to reflect that even uneducated French people spoke their own native language better than foreigners, which is, however, really not very remarkable. The illustration of the poissardes is, however, unfortunate, for the French which they speak is not, "taking it all round," nearly so good as that which one generally hears from respectable Germans, as the reader may verify for himself from a small work entitled La Poissarde, the language of which would not be intelligible to an ordinary French lady.—Translator.
