They seem, rather, stupendous growths
of nature, like crystals, or cliffs of basalt.
There is little
ornament here. That roof looks plain and bare; yet I feel that the air
is dense with sublimity. Onward I sped, crossing a bridge by the Hotel
Dieu, and, leaving the river, plunged into narrow streets. Explored a
quadrangular market; surveyed the old church of St Genevieve, and the
new - now the Pantheon; went onward to the Jardin des Plantes, and
explored its tropical bowers. Many things remind me to-day of New
Orleans, and its levee, its Mississippi, its cathedral, and the
luxuriant vegetation of the gulf. In fact, I seem to be walking in my
sleep in a kind of glorified New Orleans, all the while. Yet I return
to the gardens of the Tuileries and the Place Vendome, and in the
shadow of Napoleon's Column the illusion vanishes. Hundreds of battles
look down upon me from their blazonry.
In the evening I rested from the day's fatigue by an hour in the
garden of the Palais Royal. I sat by one of the little tables, and
called for an ice. There were hundreds of ladies and gentlemen eating
ices, drinking wine, reading the papers, smoking, chatting; scores of
pretty children were frolicking and enjoying the balmy evening. Here
six or eight midgets were jumping the rope, while papa and mamma swung
it for them. Pretty little things, with their flushed cheeks and
sparkling eyes, how they did seem to enjoy themselves!
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