all antics of New York society to the great
plains where the Adamses hew the wood and draw the water, build the cities
and bridge the rivers, and lay the iron roads, making rail-heads of the
roar of the Atlantic and the thunder of the Pacific.

This gentleman treated Adams as a paid attendant and in such a manner that
Adams one morning lifted him from his bed by the slack of his silk pajamas
and all but drowned him in his own bath.

He could not but remember the incident as he sat watching Berselius so
calm, so courtly, so absolutely destitute of mannerism, so incontestably
the superior, in some magnetic way, of all the other men who were
present.

Maxine and M. Pinchon, the secretary, were to accompany them to
Marseilles.

A cold, white Paris fog covered the city that night as they drove to the
station, and the fog detonators and horns followed them as they glided out
slowly from beneath the great glass roof. Slowly at first, then more
swiftly over rumbling bridges and clicking point, more swiftly still,
breaking from the fog-banked Seine valley, through snarling tunnel and
chattering cutting, faster now and freer, by long lines of poplar trees,
mist-strewn, and moonlit ponds and fields, spectral white roads, little
winking towns; and now, as if drawn by the magnetic south, swaying to the
rock-a-bye of speed, aiming for the lights of Dijon far away south, to the
tune of the wheels, "seventy-miles-an-hour--seventy-miles-an-hour."

Civilization, whatever else she has done, has written one poem, the
"Rapide." True to herself, she makes it pay a dividend, and prostitutes it
to the service of stockbrokers, society folk, and gamblers bound for
Monaco--but what a poem it is that we snore through between a day in Paris
and a day in Marseilles. A poem, swiftly moving, musical with speed, a
song built up of songs, telling of Paris, its chill and winter fog, of the
winter fields, the poplar trees and mist; vineyards of the Cote d'Or;
Provence with the dawn upon it, Tarascon blowing its morning bugle to the
sun; the Rhone, and the vineyards, and the olives, and the white, white
roads; ending at last in that triumphant blast of music, light and colour,
Marseilles.

_La Joconde_, Berselius's yacht, was berthed at the Messagerie wharf, and
after _dejeuner_ at the Hotel Noailles, they took their way there on
foot.

Adams had never seen the south before as Marseilles shows it. The vivid
light and the black shadows, the variegat