to behold the majesty of France. I have always liked to mark the startling
contrasts of light and shade. I have always known what all the world now
knows, that beneath the gayety of the French there burns a patriotic
and consuming fire, a high sense of public honor; a fine spirit of
self-sacrifice along with the sometimes too aggressive spirit of freedom.
In 1873 I saw them two blocks long and three files deep upon the Rue St.
Honore press up to the Bank of France, old women and old men with their
little all tied in handkerchiefs and stockings to take up the tribute
required by Bismarck to rid the soil of the detested German. They did it.
Alone they did it--the French people--the hard-working, frugal, loyal
commonalty of France--without asking the loan of a sou from the world
outside.



VI


Writing of that last Sunday in the Bois de Boulogne, I find by recurring
to the record that I said: "There is a deal more of good than bad in every
Nation. I take off my hat to the French. But, I have had my fling and I am
quite ready to go home. Even amid the gayety and the glare, the splendor of
color and light, the Hungarian band wafting to the greenery and the stars
the strains of the delicious waltz, La Veuve Joyeuse her very self--yea,
many of her--tapping the time at many adjacent tables, the song that fills
my heart is 'Hame, Hame, Hame!--Hame to my ain countree.' Yet, to come
again, d'ye mind? I should be loath to say good-by forever to the Bois
de Boulogne. I want to come back to Paris. I always want to come back to
Paris. One needs not to make an apology or give a reason.