"Yes--and fortunate," said Cassandra. "Had I not done so, a week
hence we should, every one of us, have been lost in the surging
wickedness of the city of Paris."

"But, Cassandra," said Trilby, who was anxious to return once more to
the beautiful city by the Seine, "he told us we were going to Paris."

"Of course he did," said Madame Recamier, "and in so many words.
Certainly he was not drawing upon his imagination there."

"And one might be lost in a very much worse place," put in Marguerite
de Valois, "if, indeed, it were possible to lose us in Paris at all.
I fancy that I know enough about Paris to find my way about."

"Humph!" ejaculated Cassandra. "What a foolish little thing you are!
You don't imagine that the Paris of to-day is the Paris of your time,
or even the Paris of that sweet child Trilby's time, do you? If you
do you are very much mistaken. I almost wish I had not warned you of
your danger and had let you go, just to see those eyes of yours open
with amazement at the change. You'd find your Louvre a very
different sort of a place from what it used to be, my dear lady.
Those pleasing little windows through which your relations were wont
in olden times to indulge in target practice at people who didn't go
to their church are now kept closed; the galleries which used to
swarm with people, many of whom ought to have been hanged, now swarm
with pictures, many of which ought not to have been hung; the romance
which clung about its walls is as much a part of the dead past as
yourselves, and were you to materialize suddenly therein you would
find yourselves jostled and hustled and trodden upon by the curious