It was the first beginning of summer dawn when he turned breathlessly into the Rue de Rome and stood at length in Paris. He shouldered his big bag and took his bearings. At that early hour there were few people abroad—here and there a small open carriage, drawn by a limp, melancholy horse and dominated by what he thought a picturesque cabby, passed him invitingly. A drive in a cab in America is not for a man of uncertain means, and the folly of taking a vehicle did not occur to him. Along the broad avenue at the street's foot, lights were still lit in the massive lamps, shops and houses were closed, and by a blue sign on the wall he read that he was crossing a great avenue. The Boulevard Haussmann was as tranquil as a village street. A couple of good-looking men, whom he thought were soldiers, caught his eye in their uniforms of white trousers and blue coats. He asked them, touching his hat, the first thing that came to his mind: "La Rue Mazarine, Messieurs—would they direct him?"

When he came out on the Place de la Concorde at four o'clock he was actually the only speck visible in the great circle. He stopped, enchanted, to look about him. The imaginative and inadequate picture of the Place de la Concorde his idea had drawn, faded. The light mists of the morning swept up the Avenue des Champs ElysÉes, and there stood out before his eyes the lines of the Triumphal Arch, which to Antony said: Napoleon!

On the left stretched gardens toward a great palace, all that has been left to France and the glory which was her doom.

From the spectral line of the Louvre, his eyes came back to the melancholy statues that rose near him—Strassburg, Luxemburg, Alsace and Lorraine. Huge iron wreaths hung about their bases, wreaths that blossomed as he looked, like flowers of blood and lilies of death.

Then in front of him the calm, rose-hued obelisk lifted its finger, and once again the shadow of Egypt fell across the heart of a modern city. To Antony, the obelisk had an affinity with the Abydos Sphinx, but this obelisk did not rest on the backs of four bronze creatures!

The small cabs continued to tinkle slowly across the Place; a group of young fellows passed by, singing on their way to the Latin Quarter, from some fÊte in Montmartre—they were students going home before morning. In the distance, here and there, were a few foot passengers like himself, but to Antony it seemed that he was alone in Paris. And in the fresh beginning of a day untried and momentous, the city was like a personality. In the summer softness, in the tender, agreeable light, the welcome to him was caressing and as lovely as New York had been brutal.

Antony resumed his way to the river, followed the quays where at his side the Seine ran along, reddening in the summer's sunrise. Along the river, when he crossed the Pont des Arts, he saw the stirring of Parisian life. He went on down the quays, past quaint old houses whose traditions and history he wanted to know, turned off into a dark street—la Rue Mazarine. He smiled as he read the sign. What had this narrow Parisian alley to do with him? He had adopted it out of caprice, distinguished it from all Paris.

He scanned the shops and houses; many were still closed, neither milk-shops nor antiquity dealers suggested shelter. A modest sign over a dingy-looking building caught his eye. In the courtyard, in green wooden tubs, flourished two bay-trees.

"Hotel of the Universe"—Hotel de l'Univers.

That was hospitable enough, wide enough to take Antony Fairfax in. Behind the bay-trees a dirty, discouraged looking waiter, to whom the universe had apparently not been generous, welcomed, or at least glanced, at Fairfax. The fellow wore a frayed, colourless dress-suit; his linen was suspicious, but his head at this early hour was sleekly brushed and oiled.

"No, the hotel is not yet full," he told the stranger, as though he said, "The entire universe, thank God, has not yet descended upon us."

For one franc fifty a room could be had on the sixth floor. Antony yielded up his bag and bade the man show the way.