text:  How often have we hurried down them on a cold winter's day--say the 31st of December--to buy bons-bons in the Rue des Lombards once the abode of bankers now the paradise of _confiseurs_ against the coming morrow--the grand day of visits and cadeaux--braving the snow some three feet deep in the midst of the street--or if there happened to be no snow the mud a foot and a half splashing through it with our last new pair of boots from Legrand's and the last _pantalon_ from Blondel's--for cabriolet or omnibus none might pass that way; and there amid onion-smelling crowds in a long low shop with lamps lighted at two o'clock have consummated our purchase and floundered back triumphant! Away ye gay seducing vanities of the Palais Royal or the Boulevards; your light is too garish for our sober eyes--the sugar of your comfitures is too chalky for our discriminating tooth! Our appropriate latitude is that of the Quartier St Denis! One thing however we must confess we never did in the Rue St Denis--we never dined there! _Oh non! il ne faut pas faire ca!_ 'Tis the headquarters of all the sausage-dealers the _charcutiers_ and the _rotisseurs_ of Paris