I have taken up my residence in a French family, in a real Parisian house.

You see I have the courage of my opinions; I don't shrink from carrying out my theory that the great thing is to _live_.
You know I have always been intensely interested in Balzac, who never shrank from the reality, and whose almost _lurid_ pictures of Parisian life have often haunted me in my wanderings through the old wicked-looking streets on the other side of the river.

I am only sorry that my new friends--my French family--do not live in the old city--_au coeur du vieux Paris_, as they say here.

They live only in the Boulevard Haussman, which is less picturesque; but in spite of this they have a great deal of the Balzac tone.

Madame de Maisonrouge belongs to one of the oldest and proudest families in France; but she has had reverses which have compelled her to open an establishment in which a limited number of travellers, who are weary of the beaten track, who have the sense of local colour--she explains it herself; she expresses it so well--in short, to open a sort of boarding-house.