I never knew what I stammered out to him
as an answer. I should have felt relieved if I could even have said to
him: "Well, only one."

When we arrived in London, my sadness at leaving Paris was turned into
despair. After my long stay in the French capital, huge, ponderous,
massive London seemed to me as ugly a thing as man could contrive to
make. I thought of Paris as a beauty spot on the face of the earth,
and of London as a big freckle. But soon London's massiveness, I might
say its very ugliness, began to impress me. I began to experience that
sense of grandeur which one feels when he looks at a great mountain or
a mighty river. Beside London Paris becomes a toy, a pretty plaything.
And I must own that before I left the world's metropolis I discovered
much there that was beautiful. The beauty in and about London is
entirely different from that in and about Paris; and I could not but
admit that the beauty of the French city seemed hand-made, artificial,
as though set up for the photographer's camera, everything nicely
adjusted so as not to spoil the picture; while that of the English
city was rugged, natural, and fresh.

How these two cities typify the two peoples who built them! Even the
sound of their names expresses a certain racial difference. Paris is
the concrete expression of the gaiety, regard for symmetry, love of
art, and, I might well add, of the morality of the French
people. London stands for the conservatism, the solidarity, the
utilitarianism, and, I might well add, the hypocrisy of the
Anglo-Saxon. It may sound odd to speak of the morality of the French,
if not of the hypocrisy of the English; but this seeming paradox
impresses me as a deep truth. I saw many things in Paris which were
immoral according to English standards, but the absence of hypocrisy,
the absence of the spirit to do the thing if it might only be done in
secret, robbed these very immoralities of the damning influence of the
same evils in London. I have walked along the terrace cafes of Paris
and seen hundreds of men and women sipping their wine and beer,
without observing a sign of drunkenness. As they drank, they chatted
and laughed and watched the passing crowds; the drinking seemed to be
a secondary thing. This I have witnessed, not only in the cafes along
the Grands Boulevards, but in the out-of-the-way places patronized by
the working classes. In London I have seen in the "pubs" men and women
crowded in stuffy little compartme