The mess is boiled for fifteen days, sometimes for six months; then it is considered delicious.

No pudding, no Christmas.

The repast is sacred, and the English meditate over it for six months in advance--they are the only people who put money in a savings'-bank for a dinner.

Poor families economise for months, and take a shilling to a publican every Saturday of the year, in return for which on Christmas Day they gorge themselves, and are sick for a week after.

This is their religion--thus they adore their God." M.Pyat goes on to describe the butchers' shops before Christmas; one of them, he says, is kept by a butcher clergyman, and over his door is a text.
The _Gaulois_ gives an extract of a letter of mine from a German paper, in which I venture to assert that the Parisians do not know that Champigny is within the range of the guns of their forts, and accompanies it with the following note:--"The journal which has fallen into our hands has been torn, and consequently we are unable to give the remainder of this letter.