Except for the cab-drives between quay and station at Southampton and Havre, and three half-days in Rouen, I had seen no town whatsoever outside North Devon. Paree! Paree! my heart kept crying.

Now "Pariss" was a poor flat word, and "Pary" too, as the French pronounce it; but by dropping the English S while Englishifying the French vowel I formed a darling word which my heart could caress and unwearyingly repeat, thus giving fullest vent to the delight it anticipated. It was Paree! Paree! all the way in the train and on the magical twilight drive from St. Lazare Station (gloomy hole enough) down the great boulevards, past the looming Madeleine, along the Rue Royale, across the great Concord Place, and over the sheeny river to the family "hotel" in the Faubourg. Such a glorious city, such princely streets and monuments I had never pictured, never been able to picture. Paree! Paree!

There were walks and drives with Elise and Suzanne, visits to museums, galleries, churches; though from all theatres and concerts, following the solemn promise to my Grandmother, I was debarred. The brilliant new boulevards were my chief interest. It was often a morbid interest: to see the crowds, laughing or careworn, hideous deformities, vile pockmarked faces, hunger jostling with gluttony; everywhere hurrying gesticulating Mammon. I hated them, loathed them with a physical loathing that held something of puritanism and patriotism combined: I longed for England, for goodness, for the ugly unworldliness and cleanness of the Saints. Now and then a gentle-faced little boy (for the little girls were for the most part precocious over-dressed apers of the women they would become) lit up my heart with a moment's delight: I would turn round and stare as he passed, hoping he too would turn and stare.

Our most frequent pilgrimage was to the Great Exhibition, a faery wilderness of gardens and fountains, of pavilions, pagodas and pinnacles. We witnessed the Imperial distribution of the prizes in the Great Hall. On a dais sat the Emperor—my Emperor: Man of Destiny, Parrot-Face, Waxworks, Long-Body, the prince of the kings of the earth—surrounded by kings, with the Sultan on his right hand, and pride everywhere. When the little Prince Imperial advanced to his father with the prize for workmen's dwellings, wild applause searched the very roof of the glass palace of Industry. The Emperor smiled, smiled dismally I thought, for the eyes were sad, wretched. ("Queretaro, Queretaro." His brain rang like a beaten bell. He had learnt the news today, though none of his subjects yet knew. While we saw a Sovereign adulated by the world, he saw another Sovereign—his client king—and a Mexican court-yard, and a firing party. Did he see also the selfsame day three years ahead: himself, and the preening Sultan at his right hand, prisoners both in exile and disgrace?)

Kings, everywhere Kings. For this was the year, more truly than Talleyrand's, when your carriage could not move through the streets of Paris because they were blocked with Kings. I do not think I missed a single royal visit—except the King of the Belgians', as I was seedy that day. The girls, even the Countess, made fun of my courtly mania: I did not care, I studied the newspapers, and made sure of the best view-points in each procession. Then I would stand for hours, in patient royalism, fully rewarded by the instant's pomp and the dear glance at the Lord's Anointed. There was the barbarous Tsar, with the CÆsarevitch and the young Grand Duke, his brother. Old Prussia with his big minister, one Count von Bismarck-Schoenhausen, who liked France—so well that he visited it again. Austrian Franz-Josef and the ill-fated Empress. Our own hearty Prince of Wales. Lesser truck: Sweden, Wurtemberg, Portugal, Greece; with the two Louis of Bavaria, the one that loved Lola Montes and the other that loved Wagner.

So the quick scenes shifted, with the actors princes all: till my mind was raced through by glittering equipages and the remembered faces of the great.

Greatest of all were their Hosts, Eagle and his Wife, though not too great to remember friends, or to invite our Villebecq household (with dependent) to a Tuileries dance. It was not a state-ball, but one of the Empress's "Mondays," an intimate little function for some thirty or forty guests. My orgilous delight was chilled by a swift reflection: I could not dance.

"Well," said the Countess, "you must learn."

I saw Grandmother's gentle eyes, appealing, mute in horror. My Mother came to me with a pleading No. Poor kept-in-his-place Resolution dared: What would Jesus do? I sent them packing, closed my eyes, barred up my heart. "Yes, Madame, and at once; there is no time to lose." I spoke so sharply that the poor lady started back in amaze.

Not that I danced very much at the ball, or cared to; I was the guest of an Empress, and that sufficed me. In a wide hall, the Salon of the First Consul, we stood ranged in double row. Eugenie, in a lovely robe of blue satin, of pure simplicity, without pattern or frill, swept into the room, preceded by sumptuous Officers of the Household, and followed by her ladies. Like the Emperor his soldiers, she passed us in review. To each a few gracious words. Yet what right had she to be so condescending? Who was she, anyway? Why should a few words from her lips be deemed our highest earthly privilege? It was vulgar resentment that some woman else was in a lordlier position than I; it was envy; it was democracy. I was ashamed of my unguestly thoughts when she stopped at me and said in beautiful English: "This is not worth JumiÈges, do you think?"

The ball began. Most of the ladies were dressed far more gorgeously than the Empress. I remember a tall woman (a duchess, confided the Countess), gowned in shimmering black velvet flounced with gold guipure; another in crimson velvet sewn with great silver daffodils; another in white satin-tulle covered by a light overwork of golden feathers. Everywhere lace, fans, tiaras, jewels. How plain I was beside them! I despised their half-revealed bosoms, their selfish painted faces, their sensual lips. The old ways and the Meeting would keep appearing before me, and Grandmother, and the Lord: I knew that they were right, and these things wrong. Here was I, a saved young woman, one of the Lord's elected children—tricked out like a Jezebel, with flowers in my hair. The old hymn I had so often repeated to Aunt Jael forced its way into my memory, compelled me to repeat it to myself, verse by remorseless verse:

Here in this King's palace I revelled, my bosom swelling with vanity,—

And I was dancing. The first moments showed me that our Brethren-hatred was good hatred, and Elise's description of men a just description. They pressed insinuatingly, their contact sickened me. O Lord, Lord, to what fleshliness was I sinking?—

It was nightmare. Hatred of all this luxury and glare and godlessness flooded me in so physical and overwhelming a fashion that I was near to fainting. I turned from the fleshly men, the hard horrible women: Vanity, Vanity. There was more Resolution in that night's distaste than a thousand sealed envelopes. I pleaded headache, and refused to dance again. Elise was no comfort: she was indifferent tonight, not rebellious like me. "What did I tell you?" was the best she could do.

I could watch them no longer, and suddenly left the ballroom, to wander about the palace rooms, deliberately turning my thoughts to the old history of this place that I might forget the present loathing. Whether or no much reading be a weariness to the flesh, to me it was a resource unfailing: I could take refuge from the day's trouble in reviewing the glory of yesterday. As for the Tuileries Palace, I would wager that no other living English girl could have told herself its tale much more fully: summoned more surely the long procession of its grey and glittering dead....

Catherine de Medici, first builder of the palace, warned by an astrologer that it would end in tragedy and flames. Louis XIV, the Sun King, lording it in Carrousel fÊtes. Marie-Antoinette, Austrian woman, brought here with her poor husband from Versailles, brought back again a prisoner after Varennes. June '92, first invasion of the palace by the mob: threats, insults and obscene shouts. September '92, when the vile mob invaded, sent Louis and Marie to Conciergerie prison, came here to yell, steal, sack, blaspheme, and murder, hacking to pieces the old faithful servants of the crown, slashing with knives the dying and the doctors attending to the dying: prostitutes ransacked the Queen's wardrobes and wallowed, loathsomely, in her bed, kicking up their legs in democratic glee. Revolutionaries, Girondins, Mountainists, with Prince Robespierre—mean, savage and pure. The flat-haired Corsican youth. From here he went forth to be crowned, from here the Pope of Rome went forth to crown him. Here reigned the pomp and splendour of the Empire; hither entered Josephine in triumph and hence slunk out in disgrace; hither came Marie-Louise (Austrian woman too) in pomp processional, hence she fled a fugitive. These walls stared at the coming and going of the Hundred Days; at bellied Eighteenth Louis and Charles the Tenth his brother, last king of Ancient France; at Louis-Philippe of pear-shaped head and Brethering umbrella; at the wild mobs of '48 (my birth year), pillaging anew. Phrensy of peoples, folly of Kings: change and change about. Each new monarch had sagely wagged his head: "The others, ha ha!—I know the mistakes they made—I will profit by their example—my sojourn here is eternal—these barns are big, but I will build greater."

With my Emperor permanence had come at last. Him no fears could shake: not by divine right nor mere parliaments nor yet by plebiscite alone had he reached the palace, but by dreams, which alone come true. Here he had entered in a state which mocked his poor predecessors; here on the balcony he had stood, while the crowd in the gardens madly acclaimed him, and the Marshal St. Arnaud proclaimed the Second Empire. Here in a pomp and luxury before unknown he had reigned and gloried. From these doors, at the Depart for Italy, he had sallied forth; to sally forth again to Notre-Dame, for the Te-Deum for Solferino, through roads strewn with flowers and adoration. He had made Paris the capital of capitals, himself the King of Kings, this Palace the centre of the universe....

One morning a letter reached the Countess from Lord Tawborough. He was at an hotel in Paris; might he take the liberty of calling?

My heart beat fast with joyful expectation.

He came, once and again. We went out together, sometimes with the others, oftenmost alone—on long walks in the Paris streets or excursions to Versailles and the environs. He was an oasis in this city-wilderness of evil faces: the sight of this Englishman, the clean-featured noble face, the fairy godfather to whom I owed all the rich experiences of the past year, Rachel's little boy, gave me a peaceful pleasure which after my hectic ambitions and intrigues was like dew after rain. The interest of his conversation, the sense of worth and superiority (to me) he imparted cleared my foolish brain and cooled my insane pride. "You'd call this gush if it were Suzanne who thought it!" whispered Satan. "Yes Sir," I replied, "but Tawborough is not Fouquier"—Everywoman's reply. Intellect, character, kindness, purity, race—it was a banquet of pure delight.

I tried to analyse for myself the reasons for the exhilaration which filled me in his presence, and in no other presence; not in Grandmother's, though I had loved her always: not in Elise's, though I loved her now. I could unravel no reasons, only ponder on the facts: (1) that his was the only face I knew which gave me a positive, physical joy, which filled me with tenderness and wonder. I would have fed on his face unceasingly if I had dared; (2) that in his presence alone the consciousness of self, of omnipresent Mary, left me, and I felt free, unconscious, unburdened, happy: if when he was at hand I stopped suddenly and asked myself "And Eternity?" I could laugh, and flout the bogey; (3) I apprehended that these emotions were reciprocal, and this was the chief delight of all.

Yet, I argued, this was not Love. Love was Robbie. Love was Christmas-Night, one day to be renewed. Still, what lesser word than love could describe the admiration, the gratitude, the fluttering tenderness, the pure exultant affection I felt? So in my diary I called it love (with a small l) and kept the capital for Robbie.