And at the same moment, the Abbe Constantin, on his knees before his
little wooden bedstead, called down, with all the strength of his soul,
the blessings of Heaven on the two women through whose bounty he had
passed such a sweet and happy day. He prayed God to bless Mrs. Scott in
her children, and to give to Miss Percival a husband after her own heart.




CHAPTER V

THE FAIR AMERICANS

Formerly Paris belonged to the Parisians, and that at no very remote
period-thirty or forty years ago. At that epoch the French were the
masters of Paris, as the English are the masters of London, the Spaniards
of Madrid, and the Russians of St. Petersburg. Those times are no more.
Other countries still have their frontiers; there are now none to France.
Paris has become an immense Babel, a universal and international city.
Foreigners do not only come to visit Paris; they come there to live.
At the present day we have in Paris a Russian colony, a Spanish colony,
a Levantine colony, an American colony. The foreigners have already
conquered from us the greater part of the Champs-Elysees and the
Boulevard Malesherbes; they advance, they extend their outworks; we
retreat, pressed back by the invaders; we are obliged to expatriate
ourselves. We have begun to found Parisian colonies in the plains of
Passy, in the plain of Monceau, in quarters which formerly were not Paris
at all, and which are not quite even now. Among the foreign colonies,
the richest, the most populous, the most brilliant, is the American