e, and it stirred and piqued his interest. A wish to
stop one of these people, and to pour forth his longings, his hopes, his
dreams, surged within him in a glow of fellowship and, smiling to
himself at the pleasant wildness of the thought, he made his way through
the wider spaces of the Place Lafayette and the Square Montholon into
the long, busy rue Lafayette.

Here, in the rue Lafayette, the gloomy aspects of the district he had
made his own dropped behind him, and a wealth of bustle and gayety
greeted and fascinated him. Here the sun seemed fuller, the traffic was
more dense, and the shops offered visions to please every sense. Wine
shops were here, curio shops, shops all golden and tempting with cheeses
and butter, and hat shops that foretold the spring in a glitter of blues
and greens. He passed on, jostling the crowd good-humoredly, being
jostled in the same spirit, hugging his freedom with a silent joy.

Down the rue Halevy he went and on into the Place de l'Opera; but here
he slackened his pace, and something of his _insouciance_ dropped from
him. The wide space filled with its cosmopolitan crowd, the opera-house
itself, so aloof in its dark splendor, spoke to him of another
Paris--the Paris that might be Vienna, Petersburg, London, for all it
has to say of individual life. His mood changed; he paused and looked
back over his shoulder in the direction from whence he had come. But the
hesitation was fleeting; a quick courage followed on the doubt. The
adventurer must take life in every aspect--must face all questions, all
moments! He turned up the collar of his coat, as though preparing to
face a chillier region, and went forward boldly as before.

One or two narrow streets brought him out upon the Place de Rivoli,
where Joan of Arc sat astride her golden horse, and where great heaps of
flowers were stacked at the street corners--mimosa, lilac, violets. He
halted irresistibly to glance at these flowers breathing of the south,
and to glance at the shining statue. Then he crossed the rue de Rivoli
and, passing through the garden of the Tuileries, emerged upon the Place
de la Concorde.

On the Place de la Concorde the cool, clean hand of the morning had
drawn its most striking picture; here, in the great, unsheltered spaces,
the frost had fallen heavily, softening and beautifying to an
inconceivable degree. The suggestion of modernity that ordinarily hangs
over the place was veiled, and the subtle hints of histo