banks of the Seine, and, as I shall never see the other side again--do
not want to see it in its time of sorrow and garb of mourning--I may be
forgiven a retrospective pause in this egotistic chronicle. Or, shall I not
say, a word or two of affectionate retrogression, though perchance it leads
me after the manner of Silas Wegg to drop into poetry and take a turn with
a few ghosts into certain of their haunts, when you, dear sir, or madame,
or miss, as the case may be, and I were living that "other life," whereof
we remember so little that we cannot recall who we were, or what name we
went by, howbeit now-and-then we get a glimpse in dreams, or a "hunch" from
the world of spirits, or spirts-and-water, which makes us fancy we might
have been Julius Caesar, or Cleopatra--as maybe we were!--or at least Joan
of Arc, or Jean Valjean!



II


Let me repeat that upon no spot of earth has the fable we call existence
had so rare a setting and rung up its curtain upon such a succession of
performances; has so concentrated human attention upon mundane affairs; has
called such a muster roll of stage favorites; has contributed to romance so
many heroes and heroines, to history so many signal episodes and personal
exploits, to philosophy so much to kindle the craving for vital knowledge,
to stir sympathy and to awaken reflection.

Greece and Rome seem but myths of an Age of Fable. They live for us as
pictures live, as statues live. What was it I was saying about statues--
that they all look alike to me? There are too many of them. They bring the
ancients down to us in marble and bronze, not in flesh and blood. We do not