They were selling flowers and
fruit, all kinds of fruit--cherries, strawberries, rosy-cheeked apples,
luscious grapes--all freshly picked and sparkling with dew. The gendarme
said he had never seen any girls--not in this particular square.
Referring casually to the blood of saints and martyrs, he said he would
like to see a few girls in that town worth looking at. In the square
itself sat six motherly old souls round a lamp-post. One of them had a
moustache, and was smoking a pipe, but in other respects, I have no
doubt, was all a woman should be. Two of them were selling fish. That
is they would have sold fish, no doubt, had anyone been there to buy
fish. The gaily clad thousands of eager purchasers pictured in the
postcard were represented by two workmen in blue blouses talking at a
corner, mostly with their fingers; a small boy walking backwards, with
the idea apparently of not missing anything behind him, and a yellow dog
that sat on the kerb, and had given up all hope--judging from his
expression--of anything ever happening again. With the gendarme and
myself, these four were the only living creatures in the square. The
rest of the market consisted of eggs and a few emaciated fowls hanging
from a sort of broom handle.

"And where's the cathedral?" I asked the gendarme. It was a Gothic
structure in the postcard of evident antiquity. He said there had once
been a cathedral. It was now a brewery; he pointed it out to me. He
said he thought some portion of the original south wall had been
retained. He thought the manager of the brewery might be willing to show
it to me.

"And the fountain?" I demanded, "and all these doves!"

He said there had been talk of a fountain. He believed the design had
already been prepared.

I took the next train back. I do not now travel much out of my way to
see the original of the picture postcard. Maybe others have had like
experience and the picture postcard as a guide to the Continent has lost
its value.

The dealer has fallen back upon the eternal feminine. The postcard
collector is confined to girls. Through the kindness of correspondents I
possess myself some fifty to a hundred girls, or perhaps it would be more
correct to say one girl in fifty to a hundred different hats. I have her
in big hats, I have her in small hats, I have her in no hat at all. I
have her smiling, and I have her looking as if she had lost her last
sixpence. I have her overdressed, I