e effectually symbolised--the vision of the whole,
I say, comes back to me quite in the form of a chapter from the
Rougon-Macquart, with its effect of something long and dense and heavy,
without shades or undertones, but immensely kept-up and done. I dare say
that for those months our contemplations, our daily exercise in general,
strayed little beyond the Champs-Elysees, though I recall confusedly as
well certain excursions to Passy and Auteuil, where we foregathered with
small resident compatriots the easy gutturalism of whose French, an
unpremeditated art, was a revelation, an initiation, and whence we
roamed, for purposes of picnic, into parts of the Bois de Boulogne that,
oddly enough, figured to us the virgin forest better than anything at
our own American door had done.

It was the social aspect of our situation that most appealed to me, none
the less--for I detect myself, as I woo it all back, disengaging a
social aspect again, and more than ever, from the phenomena disclosed to
my reflective gape or to otherwise associated strolls; perceptive
passages not wholly independent even of the occupancy of two-sous chairs
within the charmed circle of Guignol and of Gringalet. I suppose I
should have blushed to confess it, but Polichinelle and his puppets, in
the afternoons, under an umbrage sparse till evening fell, had still
their spell to cast--as part and parcel, that is, of the general
intensity of animation and variety of feature. The "amusement," the
aesthetic and human appeal, of Paris had in those days less the air of a
great shining conspiracy to please, the machinery in movement confessed
less to its huge purpose; but manners and types and traditions, the
detail of the scene, its pointed particulars, went their way with a
straighter effect, as well as often with a homelier grace--character,
temper and tone had lost comparatively little of their emphasis. These
scattered accents were matter for our eyes and ears--not a little even
already for our respective imaginations; though it is only as the season
waned and we set up our fireside afresh and for the winter that I
connect my small revolution with a wider field and with the company of
W. J. Again for that summer he was to be in eclipse to me; Guignol and
Gringalet failed to claim his attention, and Mademoiselle Danse, I make
out, deprecated his theory of exact knowledge, besides thinking him
perhaps a little of an _ours_--which came to the same thing. We
adj