op hat and frock coat, in
which I used to think he must have been born, went too. If his
fashion-plate correctness--men wore frock coats then--made him
conspicuous at our Thursday nights it can be imagined what he was
sitting with his coat tails in the gutter at the cabman's table where
the glazed hat and the three-caped coat of the Paris _cocher_ set the
fashion. He had the grace to be ashamed of himself, often apologizing
for his clothes and assuring us that he could not help himself, which
was his reason, I fancy, for accepting at an early age the professorial
chair where the decorum of his hat and coat was in need of no apology.

IV

I have said we were young. It seems superfluous to add that now and
then, in the sunshine of the perfect May day, with the call of the
lilacs and the horse-chestnuts getting into our heads as well as into my
copy, the _Salon_ grew stuffy beyond endurance, work became a crime, and
we put up our catalogues and note-books before the closing hour and
hurried anywhere just to be out-of-doors, as if our sole profession in
life was to idle it away. After all, only the prig can be in Paris when
May is there and not play truant sometimes.

The year Paris chose our week to show how hot it can be in May when it
has a mind to, was the year I got to learn something of the Paris
suburbs. The joyous expedition which ended our every day that year was
so in the spirit of Harland that I should be inclined to look upon him
as the tempter, had we not, with the usual amiability of the tempted,
met him more than half way. Still, he excelled us all in the knack of
collecting us from our work, no matter how it had scattered us or in
what quarter of the town we might be, and carrying us off suddenly out
of it in directions we none of us had dreamed of the minute before, just
as he would collect and carry us off suddenly in London. Only, he was
more resourceful in Paris because in Paris more resources were made to
his hand. There are as beautiful places round London--that is, beautiful
in the English way--as round Paris, but they do not invite to a holiday
with the charm no sensible man can resist. The loveliness of Hampton
Court and Richmond and Hampstead Heath and the River is not to be denied
and yet, gay as the English playing there manage to look, the only
genuine gaiety is the Bank Holiday maker's. Tradition consecrates the
loveliness bordering upon Paris to the gaiety to which Gavarni and
Muerger are