off his cap. "He isn't MY
Emperor," he kept repeating, "and I won't do it." The shrill cries of
"Vive l'Empereur!" seemed to me a very inadequate substitute for the
full-throated cheers with which our own Queen was received when she
drove through London. I used to hear the Emperor alluded to as
"Badinguet" by the hall-porter of our hotel, who was a Royalist, and
consequently detested the Bonapartes.

My father had been on very friendly terms with Napoleon III., then
Prince Louis Napoleon, during the period of his exile in London in
1838, when he lived in King Street, St. James'. Prince Louis Napoleon
acted as my father's "Esquire" at the famous Eglinton Tournament in
August, 1839. The tournament, over which such a vast amount of trouble
and expense had been lavished, was ruined by an incessant downpour of
rain, which lasted four days. My father gave me as a boy the "Challenge
Shield" with coat of arms, which hung outside his tent at the
tournament, and that shield has always accompanied me in my wanderings.
It hangs within a few feet of me as I write, as it hung forty-three
years ago in my room in Berlin, and later in Petrograd, Lisbon, and
Buenos Ayres.

One of the great sights of Paris in the "sixties," whilst it was still
gas-lighted, was the "cordon de lumiere de la Rue de Rivoli." As every
one knows, the Rue de Rivoli is nearly two miles long, and runs
perfectly straight, being arcaded throughout its length. In every arch
of the arcades there hung then a gas lamp. At night the continuous
ribbon of flame from these lamps, stretching in endless vista down the
street, was a fascinatingly beautiful sight. Every French provincial
who visited Paris was expected to admire the "cordon de lumiere de la
Rue de Rivoli." Now that electricity has replaced gas, I fancy that the
lamps are placed further apart, and so the effect of a continuous
quivering band of yellow flame is lost. Equally every French provincial
had to admire the "luxe de gaz" of the Place de la Concorde. It
certainly blazed with gas, but now with electric arc-lamps there is
double the light with less than a tenth of the number of old flickering
gas-lamps; another example of quality vs. quantity.

Most of my father and mother's French friends lived in the Faubourg
Saint Germain. Their houses, though no doubt very fine for
entertaining, were dark and gloomy in the daytime. Our little friends
of my own age seemed all to inhabit dim rooms looking into courtyar