large place,
monsieur."

"On the contrary," I answered, "it is small enough if a man will but
play the game. A man, who knows his Paris, must be in one of
half-a-dozen places some time during the day."

"It is true," Louis admitted. "Yet monsieur has not been successful."

"It has been because some one has warned the man of whom I am in
search!" I declared.

"There are worse places," he remarked, "in which one might be forced
to spend one's time."

"In theory, excellent, Louis," I said. "In practice, I am afraid I
cannot agree with you. So far," I declared, gloomily, "my pilgrimage
has been an utter failure. I cannot meet, I cannot hear of, the man
who I know was flaunting it before the world three weeks ago."

Louis shrugged his shoulders.

"Monsieur can do no more than seek," he remarked. "For the rest, one
may leave many burdens behind in the train at the Gare du Nord."

I shook my head.

"One cannot acquire gayety by only watching other people who are gay,"
I declared. "Paris is not for those who have anxieties, Louis. If ever
I were suffering from melancholia, for instance, I should choose some
other place for a visit."

Louis laughed softly.

"Ah! Monsieur," he answered, "you could not choose better. There is no
place so gay as this, no place so full of distractions."

I shrugged my shoulders.

"It is your native city," I reminded him.

"That goes for nothing," Louis answered. "Where I live, there always I
make my native city. I have lived in Vienna and Berlin, Budapest and
Palermo, Florence and London. It is not an affair of the place. Yet of
all these, if one seeks it, there is most distraction to be found
here. Monsieur does not agree with me," he added, glancing into my
face. "There is one thing more which I would tell him. Perhaps it is
the explanation. Paris, the very home of happiness and gayety, is also
the loneliest and the saddest city in the world for those who go
alone."

"There is truth in what you say, Louis," I admitted.

"The very fact," he continued slowly, "that all the world amuses
itself, all the world is gay here, makes the solitude of the
unfortunate who has no companion a thing more _triste_, more
keenly to be felt. Monsieur is alone?"

"I am alone," I admitted, "except for the companions of chance whom
one meets everywhere."

We had been walking for some time slowly side by side, and we came now
to a standstill. Louis held up his hand and called a taximeter.

"Mon