ain! Do you know what that
means, O Parisians? It is to find--not indeed the cookery of the _Rocher
de Cancale_ as Borel elaborates it for those who can appreciate it, for
that exists only in the Rue Montorgueil--but a meal which reminds you
of it! It is to find the wines of France, which out of France are to be
regarded as myths, and as rare as the woman of whom I write! It is
to find--not the most fashionable pleasantry, for it loses its aroma
between Paris and the frontier--but the witty understanding, the
critical atmosphere in which the French live, from the poet down to the
artisan, from the duchess to the boy in the street.

In 1836, when the Sardinian Court was residing at Genoa, two Parisians,
more or less famous, could fancy themselves still in Paris when they
found themselves in a palazzo, taken by the French Consul-General, on
the hill forming the last fold of the Apennines between the gate of San
Tomaso and the well-known lighthouse, which is to be seen in all the
keepsake views of Genoa. This palazzo is one of the magnificent villas
on which Genoese nobles were wont to spend millions at the time when the
aristocratic republic was a power.

If the early night is beautiful anywhere, it surely is at Genoa, after
it has rained as it can rain there, in torrents, all the morning; when
the clearness of the sea vies with that of the sky; when silence reigns
on the quay and in the groves of the villa, and over the marble heads
with yawning jaws, from which water mysteriously flows; when the stars
are beaming; when the waves of the Mediterranean lap one after another
like the avowal of a woman, from whom you drag it word by word. It must
be confessed, that the moment when the perfumed air brings fragrance to
the lungs and to our day-dreams; when voluptuousness, made visible and
ambient as the air, holds you in your easy-chair; when, a spoon in your
hand, you sip an ice or a sorbet, the town at your feet and fair woman
opposite--such Boccaccio hours can be known only in Italy and on the
shores of the Mediterranean.

Imagine to yourself, round the table, the Marquis di Negro, a knight
hospitaller to all men of talent on their travels, and the Marquis
Damaso Pareto, two Frenchmen disguised as Genoese, a Consul-General
with a wife as beautiful as a Madonna, and two silent children--silent
because sleep has fallen on them--the French Ambassador and his wife,
a secretary to the Embassy who believes himself to be crushed