Paris upon next to nothing with very great luxury, so we tried it; we
strolled through the lilac aisles among bonnes and babies, attended
military spectacles, rode on omnibuses, dined on the country heights,
went to theatres, and had a most pleasurable time, gaining everywhere
front places, friendly smiles, kind little services, in a way that would
have been incomprehensible to me but for my consciousness of the magical
influence of my father's address, a mixture of the ceremonious and the
affable such as the people could not withstand.

'The poet is perhaps, on the whole, more exhilarating than the alderman,'
he said.

These were the respective names given by him to the empty purse and the
full purse. We vowed we preferred the poet.

'Ay,' said he, 'but for all that the alderman is lighter on his feet: I
back him to be across the Channel first. The object of my instructions
to you will be lost, Richie, if I find you despising the Alderman's
Pegasus. On money you mount. We are literally chained here, you know,
there is no doubt about it; and we are adding a nail to our fetters
daily. True, you are accomplishing the Parisian accent. Paris has also
this immense advantage over all other cities: 'tis the central hotel on
the high-road of civilization. In Paris you meet your friends to a
certainty; it catches them every one in turn; so now we must abroad early
and late, and cut for trumps.' A meeting with a friend of my father,
Mr. Monterez Williams, was the result of our resolute adoption of this
system. He helped us on to Boulogne, where my father met another friend,
to whom he gave so sumptuous a dinner that we had not money enough to pay
the hotel bill.