The Cockaynes in Paris - Tapa blanda

The story I have to tell is disjointed. I throw it out as I picked it up. My duties, the nature of which is neither here nor there, have borne me to various parts of Europe. I am a man, not with an establishment—but with two portmanteaus. I have two hats in Paris and two in London always. I have seen everything in both cities, and like Paris, on the whole, best. There are many reasons, it seems to me, why an Englishman who has the tastes of a duke and the means of a half-pay major, should prefer the banks of the Seine to those of the Thames—even with the new Embankment.