Tuesday, June 7. _A la Louvre_! But first the ladies must "shop"
a little. I sit by the counter and watch the pretty Parisian
_shopocracy_. A lady presides at the desk. Trim little grisettes
serve the customers so deftly, that we wonder why awkward men should
ever attempt to do such things. Nay, they are so civil, so evidently
disinterested and solicitous for your welfare, that to buy is the most
natural thing imaginable.
But to the Louvre! Provided with catalogues, I abandoned the ladies,
and strolled along to take a kind of cream-skimming look at the whole.
I was highly elated with one thing. There were three Madonnas with
dark hair and eyes: one by Murillo, another by Carracci, and another
by Guido. It showed that painters were not so utterly hopeless as a
class, and given over by common sense to blindness of mind, as I had
supposed.
H. begins to recant her heresy in regard to Rubens. Here we find his
largest pieces. Here we find the real originals of several real
originals we saw in English galleries. It seems as though only upon a
picture as large as the side of a parlor could his exuberant genius
find scope fully to lay itself out.
When I met II. at last - after finishing the survey - her cheek was
flushed, and her eye seemed to swim.
