murder us. She is a hard, clever Frenchwoman, who
would like to amuse herself and enjoy her Paris, and she must be bored to
death at passing all her time in the midst of stupid English people who
mumble broken French at her. Some day she will poison the soup or the
_vin rouge_; but I hope that will not be until after mother and I shall
have left her. She has two daughters, who, except that one is decidedly
pretty, are meagre imitations of herself.

The "family," for the rest, consists altogether of our beloved
compatriots, and of still more beloved Englanders. There is an
Englishman here, with his sister, and they seem to be rather nice people.
He is remarkably handsome, but excessively affected and patronising,
especially to us Americans; and I hope to have a chance of biting his
head off before long. The sister is very pretty, and, apparently, very
nice; but, in costume, she is Britannia incarnate. There is a very
pleasant little Frenchman--when they are nice they are charming--and a
German doctor, a big blonde man, who looks like a great white bull; and
two Americans, besides mother and me. One of them is a young man from
Boston,--an aesthetic young man, who talks about its being "a real Corot
day," etc., and a young woman--a girl, a female, I don't know what to
call her--from Vermont, or Minnesota, or some such place. This young
woman is the most extraordinary specimen of artless Yankeeism that I ever
encountered; she is really too horrible. I have been three times to
Clementine about your underskirt, etc.

CHAPTER IV

FROM LOUIS LEVERETT, IN PARIS, TO HARVARD TREMONT, IN BOSTON.

September 25th.

My dear Harvard--I have carried out my plan, of which I gave you a hint
in my last, and I only regret that I should not have done it before. It
is human nature, after all, that is the most interesting thing in the
world, and it only reveals itself to the truly earnest seeker. There is
a want of earnestness in that life of hotels and railroad trains, which
so many of our countrymen are content to lead in this strange Old World,
and I was distressed to find how far I, myself; had been led along the
dusty, beaten track. I had, however, constantly wanted to turn aside
into more unfrequented ways; to plunge beneath the surface and see what I
should discover. But the opportunity had always been missing; somehow, I
never meet those opportunities that we hear about and read about--the
things that happen