One can scarce wonder that men like Hugo and Balzac chose this quarter
of the town to live in--and Rachael, too!--it having given such frequent
shelter to so many of their fantastic creations, having been the real abode
of a train of gallants and bravos, of saints and harlots from the days of
Diane de Poitiers to the days of Pompadour and du Barry, and of statesmen
and prelates likewise from Sully to Necker, from Colbert to Turgot.



III


I speak of the Marais as I might speak of Madison Square, or Hyde Park--as
a well-known local section--yet how few Americans who have gone to Paris
have ever heard of it. It is in the eastern division of the town. One finds
it a curious circumstance that so many if not most of the great cities
somehow started with the rising, gradually to migrate toward the setting
sun.

When I first wandered about Paris there was little west of the Arch of
Stars except groves and meadows. Neuilly and Passy were distant villages.
Auteuil was a safe retreat for lovers and debtors, with comic opera villas
nestled in high-walled gardens. To Auteuil Armand Duval and his Camille
hied away for their short-lived idyl. In those days there was a lovely lane
called Marguerite Gautier, with a dovecote pointed out as the very "rustic
dwelling" so pathetically sung in Verdi's tuneful score and tenderly
described in the original Dumas text. The Boulevard Montmorenci long ago
plowed the shrines of romance out of the knowledge of the living, and a
part of the Longchamps racecourse occupies the spot whither impecunious
poets and adventure-seeking wives repaired to escape the insistence of