out through the snow-clouds and jumped into the Baroness's room. "Bonte
divine," exclaimed this lady, "what a climate!"

"We will go out and see the world," said Felix.

And after a while they went out. The air had grown warm as well as
brilliant; the sunshine had dried the pavements. They walked about the
streets at hazard, looking at the people and the houses, the shops and
the vehicles, the blazing blue sky and the muddy crossings, the hurrying
men and the slow-strolling maidens, the fresh red bricks and the bright
green trees, the extraordinary mixture of smartness and shabbiness.
From one hour to another the day had grown vernal; even in the bustling
streets there was an odor of earth and blossom. Felix was immensely
entertained. He had called it a comical country, and he went about
laughing at everything he saw. You would have said that American
civilization expressed itself to his sense in a tissue of capital jokes.
The jokes were certainly excellent, and the young man's merriment was
joyous and genial. He possessed what is called the pictorial sense;
and this first glimpse of democratic manners stirred the same sort of
attention that he would have given to the movements of a lively
young person with a bright complexion. Such attention would have been
demonstrative and complimentary; and in the present case Felix might
have passed for an undispirited young exile revisiting the haunts of
his childhood. He kept looking at the violent blue of the sky, at the
scintillating air, at the scattered and multiplied patches of color.

"Comme c'est bariole, eh?" he said to his sister in that foreign tongue
which they both appeared to feel a mysterious prompting occasionally to
use.