The tobacconist's shop is singularly convenient. It has, namely, an entrance at the back, as well as that giving on to the street of St. Gingolphe. This entrance is through a little courtyard, in which is the stable and coach-house combined, where Madame Perinère, a lady who paints the magic word “Modes” beneath her name on the door-post of number seventeen, keeps the dapper little cart and pony which carry her bonnets to the farthest corner of Paris.
The tobacconist is a large man, much given to perspiration. In fact, one may safely make the statement that he perspires annually from the middle of April to the second or even third week in October. In consequence of this habit he wears no collar, and a man without a collar does not start fairly on the social race. It is always best to make inquiries before condemning a man who wears no collar. There is probably a very good reason, as in the case of Mr. Jacquetot, but it is to be feared that few pause to seek it. One need not seek the reason with much assiduity in this instance, because the tobacconist of the Rue St. Gingolphe is always prepared to explain it at length. French people are thus. They talk of things, and take pleasure in so doing, which we, on this side of the Channel, treat with a larger discretion.
Mr. Jacquetot does not even wear a collar on Sunday, for the simple reason that Sunday is to him as other days. He attends no place of worship, because he acknowledges but one god--the god of most Frenchmen--his inner man. His pleasures are gastronomical, his sorrows stomachic. The little shop is open early and late, Sundays, week-days, and holidays. Moreover, the tobacconist--Mr. Jacquetot himself--is always at his post, on the high chair behind the counter, near the window, where he can see into the street. This constant attention to business is almost phenomenal, because Frenchmen who worship the god of Mr. Jacquetot love to pay tribute on fête-days at one of the little restaurants on the Place at Versailles, at Duval's, or even in the Palais Royal. Mr. Jacquetot would have loved nothing better than a pilgrimage to any one of these shrines, but he was tied to the little tobacco store. Not by the chains of commerce. Oh, no! When rallied by his neighbours for such an unenterprising love of his own hearth, he merely shrugged his heavy shoulders.