[Illustration: JARDIN ET PALAIS DU LUXEMBOURG.]

In the summer evenings a band of music plays for an hour to a vast
multitude. Four of the finest bands in Paris take turns in playing at
seven o'clock, four evenings in the week, and their music is of the
highest order. Perhaps fifty thousand people are gathered at once, men,
women, and children, to listen to the delicious music and the
gathering in itself is a sight worth seeing. The great majority
promenade slowly around the band, some stand still, and a very few rent
chairs and sit. Nearly all the men smoke, and occasionally a woman does
the same. But the flavor of the tobacco is execrable. What substitute
the French use I know not, but the villainous smells which come from the
cigars smoked by the majority of Frenchmen indicate something very bad.
Cabbage leaves--so extensively used to make cigars with in England--do
not give forth so vile a stench.

I always noticed in the Luxembourg gardens many fine looking men, and
some elegantly dressed and lady-like women, but the majority of the
latter were grisettes, or mistresses. Many students were promenading
with their little temporary wives, not in the least ashamed to make such
a public display of their vices. The women present might be divided into
four classes; the gay but not vicious, students' mistresses, ordinary
strumpets, and the poor but virtuous, by far the majority belonging to
those classes which have a poor reputation. Yet the conduct of those
women was in every respect proper. There were no indecent gestures, and
not a loud word spoken which would have been out of place in a
drawing-room. Not a woman addressed one of the opposite sex.

Directly in front of the Luxembourg palace there is a bower of orange
trees and statues railed off from other portions of the garden. It
presents an extremely beautiful appearance. In front of it there is a
fine basin of water and a fountain. Four nude marble boys support a
central basin, from which the water pours. The ground directly in front
of the palace is lower than it is on either side, and a row of fine
orange trees extends out on either hand from the palace, and flowers of
every description mingle their fragrance with that of the orange
blossoms. Groves of trees extend far to the right and left, and to the
south, there are fine gardens devoted to the cultivation of rare plants
and every variety of fruit trees.

The best thing I know about the Luxembourg palace is,