into the street; and, thinking they have sent for something or somebody,
I sit down and wait with Job-like patience for something to turn up.
Nothing, however, turns up, and at the expiration of an hour I naturally
begin to feel neglected and impatient, and again suggest the rope; when,
at a motion from le proprietaire, le portier pilots me around a neighboring
corner to a locksmith's establishment, where, voluntarily acting the part
of interpreter, he engages on my behalf, for half a franc, a man to come
with a bunch of at least a hundred skeleton-keys of all possible shapes
to attack the refractory key-hole. After trying nearly all the keys, and
disburdening himself of whole volumes of impulsive French ejaculations,
this man likewise gives it up in despair; but, now everything else has
been tried and failed, the countenance of la portier suddenly lights up,
and he slips quietly around to an adjoining room, and enters mine inside
of two minutes by simply lifting a small hook out of a staple with his
knife-blade. There appears to be a slight coolness, as it were, between
le proprietaire and me after this incident, probably owing to the
intellectual standard of each becoming somewhat lowered in the other's
estimation in consequence of it. Le proprietaire, doubtless, thinks a
man capable of leaving the key inside of the door must be the worst type
of an ignoramus; and certainly my opinion of him for leaving such a
diabolical arrangement unchanged in the latter half of the nineteenth
century is not far removed from the same.

Visiting the headquarters of the Societe Velocipedique Mctropolitaine
on Friday evening, I obtain from the president the desired directions
regarding the route, and am all prepared to continue eastward in the
morning. Wheeling down the famous Champs Elysees at eleven at night,
when the concert gardens are in full blast and everything in a blaze,
of glory, with myriads of electric lights festooned and in long brilliant
rows among the trees, is something to be remembered for a lifetime.