was then, in the sweet early forties of this worn-out old century, and
before this poor scribe had reached his teens?

Ah! it is something to have known that Paris, which lay at one's feet as
one gazed from the heights of Passy, with all its pinnacles and spires
and gorgeously-gilded domes, its Arch of Triumph, its Elysian Fields,
its Field of Mars, its Towers of our Lady, its far-off Column of July,
its Invalids, and Vale of Grace, and Magdalen, and Place of the Concord,
where the obelisk reared its exotic peak by the beautiful unforgettable
fountains.

There flowed the many-bridged winding river, always the same way, unlike
our tidal Thames, and always full; just beyond it was spread that
stately, exclusive suburb, the despair of the newly rich and recently
ennobled, where almost every other house bore a name which read like a
page of French history; and farther still the merry, wicked Latin
quarter and the grave Sorbonne, the Pantheon, the Garden of Plants; on
the hither side, in the middle distance, the Louvre, where the kings of
France had dwelt for centuries; the Tuileries, where "the King of the
French" dwelt then, and just for a little while yet.

Well I knew and loved it all; and most of all I loved it when the sun
was setting at my back, and innumerable distant windows reflected the
blood-red western flame. It seemed as though half Paris were on fire,
with the cold blue east for a background.

Dear Paris!

Yes, it is something to have roamed over it as a small boy--a small
English boy (that is, a small boy unattended by his mother or his