When I was with the Johnsons everything was superficial; and, as regards
life, everything was brought down to the question of right and wrong.
They were too didactic; art should never be didactic; and what is life
but an art? Pater has said that so well, somewhere. With the Johnsons I
am afraid I lost many opportunities; the tone was gray and cottony, I
might almost say woolly. But now, as I tell you, I have determined to
take right hold for myself; to look right into European life, and judge
it without Johnsonian prejudices. 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. I don't see why I
should not, after all, use that expression, for it is the correlative of
the term _pension bourgeoise_, employed by Balzac in the _Pere Goriot_.
Do you remember the _pension bourgeoise_ of Madame Vauquer _nee_ de
Conflans? But this establishment is not at all like that: and indeed it