Nature's balsamic beds or in peasants' ricks, eating of their black,
hospitable bread, drinking from streams or the willing cup of the
goatherd.

At length he crossed a great bridge and set his foot within the
smiling city that has crushed or crowned more poets than all the
rest of the world. His breath came quickly as Paris sang to him in a
little undertone her vital chant of greeting--the hum of voice and
foot and wheel.

High up under the eaves of an old house in the Rue Conti, David paid
for lodging, and set himself, in a wooden chair, to his poems. The
street, once sheltering citizens of import and consequence, was now
given over to those who ever follow in the wake of decline.

The houses were tall and still possessed of a ruined dignity, but
many of them were empty save for dust and the spider. By night there
was the clash of steel and the cries of brawlers straying restlessly
from inn to inn. Where once gentility abode was now but a rancid and
rude incontinence. But here David found housing commensurate to his
scant purse. Daylight and candlelight found him at pen and paper.

One afternoon he was returning from a foraging trip to the lower
world, with bread and curds and a bottle of thin wine. Halfway up
his dark stairway he met--or rather came upon, for she rested on the
stair--a young woman of a beauty that should balk even the justice
of a poet's imagination. A loose, dark cloak, flung open, showed a
rich gown beneath. Her eyes changed swiftly with every little shade
of thought. Within one moment they would be round and artless like
a child's, and long and cozening like a gypsy's. One hand raised