e the massive, but
timeworn, iron gates of a park, which Dick did not doubt was the one
in which he had spent the previous night. But it was impossible to go
further in his present plight, and he boldly approached the restaurant.
As he was preparing to make his usual explanatory signs, to his great
delight he was addressed in a quaint, broken English, mixed with
forgotten American slang, by the white-trousered, black-alpaca coated
proprietor. More than that--he was a Social Democrat and an enthusiastic
lover of America--had he not been to "Bos-town" and New York, and
penetrated as far west as "Booflo," and had much pleasure in that
beautiful and free country? Yes! it was a "go-a-'ed" country--you
"bet-your-lif'." One had reason to say so: there was your
electricity--your street cars--your "steambots"--ah! such steambots--and
your "r-rail-r-roads." Ah! observe! compare your r-rail-r-roads and the
buffet of the Pullman with the line from Paris, for example--and where
is one? Nowhere! Actually, positively, without doubt, nowhere!

Later, at an appetizing breakfast--at which, to Dick's great
satisfaction, the good man had permitted and congratulated himself to
sit at table with a free-born American--he was even more loquacious.
For what then, he would ask, was this incompetence, this imbecility, of
France? He would tell. It was the vile corruption of Paris, the grasping
of capital and companies, the fatal influence of the still clinging
noblesse, and the insidious Jesuitical power of the priests. As for
example, Monsieur "the Booflo-bil" had doubtless noticed the great gates
of the park before the cafe? It was the preserve,--the hunting-park of
one of the old grand seigneurs, still kept up by his descendants, the
Comtes de Fontonelles--hundreds of acres that had never been tilled,
and kept as wild waste wilderness,--kept for a day's pleasure in a year!
And, look you! the peasants starving around its walls in their small
garden patches and pinched farms! And the present Comte de Fontonelles
cascading gold on his mistresses in Paris; and the Comtesse, his mother,
and her daughter living there to feed and fatten and pension a brood
of plotting, black-cowled priests. Ah, bah! where was your Republican
France, then? But a time would come. The "Booflo-bil" had, without
doubt, noticed, as he came along the road, the breaches in the wall of
the park?

Dick, with a slight dry reserve, "reckoned that he had."

"They were made by t