HERE I am still. You will doubtless be surprised. I am.

Day after to-morrow will be a birthday anniversary, and everybody has found it out! Ugh! Think what a nightmare the prospect of that tell-tale cake, with its little wax tapers to the number of my years!

You don’t know about the cake. My dear good landlady will observe the birthdays of her guests with a grand dinner. This cake is the “grand piÈce de rÉsistance,” borne into the room and making the circuit of the table with its little tapers, for the inspection of everybody. Would you like such a fireworks’ display of your years?

Well, being a man, maybe you would not care. But do not pronounce on me. Just wait till you are transmigrated into a woman to come into a knowledge of our much abused reserve on this point.

If a woman ever is “the weaker vessel,” believe me just here is where it comes in. The idea of home dominates her, though the home itself has been desolated and broken up forever. This is not all in my case.

Do you know what it is to have dispensations of conscientiousness? I am sorely troubled at times, and the trouble grows. It seems such a life of idleness and self-gratification this I am living, one of luxurious wandering and enjoyment of the fair face of this lovely mother earth, and beautiful accumulations from all times and nations and peoples. The flight of time—Schiller says—

But to me the years now seem come and gone like lightning flashes.

Shall I tell you how the days go? Will you care to hear? It cannot be but that much of interest should come into them. The “sight-seeing,” of course, never comes to an end. Think how impossible when I tell you the “Salon,” just opened for its annual exposition, numbers largely over 5,000 works; thirty-seven rooms of pictures! I spent yesterday afternoon in them. Guess the wear on eyes, feet and brain of the most cursory survey. At last I had to sit down, and close my eyes to shut them all out, if I could. As if I could!

Why I could not even sleep for their haunting, though I went to bed before ten to spare my eyes from further seeing. One gorgeous “Cleopatra,” Cabanal’s, proved as irresistible a sorceress to me as if I had been a Caesar or an Anthony. It represents that incident given by Plutarch in his “Life of Anthony,” when, after the battle of Actium, dreading what may happen to herself, she is having deadly poisons tried on prisoners condemned to death, to find out which would cause the least suffering. I shall not go into a description, but, if possible, will get a photograph, and show you that to give you some idea. Another historical incident, from the brush of Charrier, is that of the Empress Ariadne, who, becoming disgusted with the excesses and cruelties of her husband, the Emperor Zeno, had him, when he was—some say in an epileptic fit, others drunk—walled up in the royal tomb. She is standing beside it, bending in the attitude of listening to his furious struggle. Such a picture has a dreadful fascination. Another, by Constant, is of “Theodora,” throned in all her oriental barbaric magnificence. This is Sara Bernhardt’s great character, and the picture is very like her, whether or not meant for a portrait. I saw her in it. Do not think I am going to surfeit you on pictures though.

Here is something about living, working, worth-having-been-born women. Two French ladies of the St. Germain exclusive strain. Parents gone, fortune gone, health gone for years. Then the struggle for a living. You can’t think how interesting I find them. One is a genius, an exquisite musician, a composer. Some of her compositions are the daintiest, most poetical and pathetic I ever listened to. She is a writer of books as well, charming ones at that. The other is a singer. They gave me a Musicale a few nights ago. I saw some most entertaining messieurs. One in particular, could not speak English, but could read it. You should have heard him discuss Scott, Dickens, and Shakespeare; the last with a fervid enthusiasm. I’ll tell you more of these “anon.” One beautiful, fellow countrywoman, “divinely tall and most divinely fair,” proves delightful. She invites me to “four o’clock tea and homemade cake,” and what talks we have, and what bouts of sauce, not to say wit!

Then Paris is looking its loveliest in the witchery of May greenness and bluest of skies that fairly laugh. Long walks and longer drives and dawdles, and prowls in which plethoric purses are swiftly depleted. I can not keep a sou in my pocket. How much I shall have to tell, but I know who will never—listen!

L. G. C.

Paris, April 20, 1887.