an apartment in one
of the three Fifth Avenue houses that were not long afterward swallowed
up in the present Brevoort Hotel, and consists of the admired
appearance of my uncles "Gus" and John James to announce to my father
that the Revolution had triumphed in Paris and Louis Philippe had fled
to England. These last words, the flight of the king, linger on my ear
at this hour even as they fell there; we had somehow waked early to a
perception of Paris, and a vibration of my very most infantine
sensibility under its sky had by the same stroke got itself preserved
for subsequent wondering reference. I had been there for a short time in
the second year of my life, and I was to communicate to my parents later
on that as a baby in long clothes, seated opposite to them in a carriage
and on the lap of another person, I had been impressed with the view,
framed by the clear window of the vehicle as we passed, of a great
stately square surrounded with high-roofed houses and having in its
centre a tall and glorious column. I had naturally caused them to
marvel, but I had also, under cross-questioning, forced them to compare
notes, as it were, and reconstitute the miracle. They knew what my
observation of monumental squares had been--and alas hadn't; neither New
York nor Albany could have offered me the splendid perspective, and, for
that matter, neither could London, which moreover I had known at a
younger age still. Conveyed along the Rue St.-Honore while I waggled my
small feet, as I definitely remember doing, under my flowing robe, I had
crossed the Rue de Castiglione and taken in, for all my time, the
admirable aspect of the Place and the Colonne Vendome. I don't now
pretend to measure the extent to which my interest in the events of
1848--I was five years old--was quickened by that _souvenir_, a
tradition further reinforced, I should add, by the fact that some
relative or other, some member of our circle, was always either "there"
("there" being of course generally Europe, but particularly and
pointedly Paris) or going there or coming back from there: I at any rate
revert to the sound of the rich words on my uncles' lips as to my
positive initiation into History. It was as if I had been ready for them
and could catch on; I had heard of kings presumably, and also of
fleeing: but that kings had sometimes to flee was a new and striking
image, to which the apparent consternation of my elders added dramatic
force. So much, in any c