ntered the gay capital, and blessed every stone upon which we placed
our feet, in the fulness of our joy.

In paying our fare at Auxerre, I was obliged to use a draft on the
banker, Rougemont de Lowenberg. The ignorant conductor hesitated to
change this, but permitted us to go, on condition of keeping it until we
should arrive. Therefore, on getting out of the diligence, after
forty-eight hours of sleepless and fasting misery, the _facteur_ of the
office went with me to get it paid, leaving B---- to wait for us. I knew
nothing of Paris, and this merciless man kept me for three hours at his
heels, following him on all _his_ errands, before he did mine, in that
time traversing the whole length of the city, in order to leave a
_chevre-feuille_ at an aristocratic residence in the Faubourg St.
Germain. Yet even combined weariness and hunger could not prevent me
from looking with vivid interest down a long avenue, at the Column of
the place Vendome, in passing, and gazing up in wonder at the splendid
portico of the Madeleine. But of anything else I have a very faint
remembrance. "You can eat breakfast, now, I think," said he, when we
returned, "we have walked more than four leagues!"

I know we will be excused, that, instead of hurrying away to Notre Dame
or the Louvre, we sat down quietly to a most complete breakfast. Even
the most romantic must be forced to confess that admiration does not sit
well on an empty stomach. Our first walk was to a bath, and then, with
complexions several shades lighter, and limbs that felt us if lifted by
invisible wings, we hurried away to the Post Office. I seized the
welcome missives from my far home, with a beating heart, and hastening
back, read till the words became indistinct in the twilight.

CHAPTER XLV.

POETICAL SCENES IN PARIS.

What a gay little world in miniature this is! I wonder not that the
French, with their exuberant gaiety of spirit, should revel in its
ceaseless tides of pleasure, as if it were an earthly Elysium. I feel
already the influence of its cheerful atmosphere, and have rarely
threaded the crowds of a stranger city, with so light a heart as I do
now daily, on the thronged banks of the Seine. And yet it would be
difficult to describe wherein consists this agreeable peculiarity. You
can find streets as dark and crooked and dirty anywhere in Germany, and
squares and gardens as gay and sunny beyond the Alps, and yet they would
affect you far differently. Yo