The Frenchman has been reproached with the sin of ingratitude; has
been convicted, indeed, as possessed of more of that pride that comes
late--the day after the gift of bounty has been given--than some other
of his fellow-mortals. Yet here were a company of Frenchmen--and
Frenchwomen--proving in no ordinary fashion their equipment in this
rare virtue. It was early in May; up yonder, where the Seine flows
beneath the Parisian bridges, the pulse of the gay Paris world was
beating in time to the spring in the air. Yet these artists had
deserted the asphalt of the boulevards for the cobbles of a village
street, the delights of the _cafe chantant_ had been exchanged for the
miracle of the moon rising over the sea, and for the song of the thrush
in the bush.

The Frenchman, more easily and with simpler art than any of his modern
brethren, can change the prose of our dull, practical life into poetry;
he can turn lyrical at a moment's notice. He possesses the power of
transmuting the commonplace into the idyllic, by merely clapping on his
cap and turning his back on the haunts of men. He has retained a
singular--an almost ideal sensitiveness, of mental cuticle--such
acuteness of sensation, that a journey to a field will oftentimes yield
him all the flavor of a long voyage, and a sudden introduction to a
forest, the rapture that commonly comes only with some unwonted aspect
of nature. Perhaps it is because of this natural poet indwelling in a
Frenchman, that makes him content to remain so much at home. Surely the
extraordinary is the costly necessity for barren minds; the richly-
endowed can see the beauty that lies the other side of their own door-
step.