lease sit down. Garcon, un bock."

And I sat down. Scenes from the books of my great idols rose around
every corner, or if they didn't I made them rise. There was pride in the
process. To go to the Place de la Republique, take a seat before some
cheap, jolly cafe, squint out at the Place with an artist's eye,
reconstruct the Bastille, the Great Revolution, dream back of that to
Rousseau and Voltaire and the way they shook the world by their
writings--and then wake up and find that I had been at it for three
mortal hours! What a chap I was for dreams. I must be quite a genius.
There were hours with Hugo in Notre Dame in one of its most shadowy
corners; with Zola on top of a 'bus at night as it lumbered up into the
Belleville slums; with Balzac in an old garden I found; with Guy de
Maupassant everywhere, in the gay hum and lights of those endless cafes,
from bridges at sunset over the Seine, or far up the long rich dusk of
the Champs Elysees, lights twinkling out, and _his_ women laughing,
chattering by.

Nothing left in this rich old world but the harbor? Nothing beautiful,
fine or great for an eager, hungry, happy young man? I could laugh! I
knew now that the harbor had lied! For into this radiant city not only
the past but the whole present of the earth appeared to me to be pouring
in. Painters, sculptors, writers and builders were here from all
nations, with even some Hindus and Japs thrown in, young, bringing all
their dreams and ambitions, their gaiety, their vigor and zest.

"Young men are lucky. They will see great things."

Voltaire had said that about thirty years before the French Revolution.
It had been true then, true ever since, it was true to-day and
here--though _our_ great things I felt very sure were not to come in
violence--the world had gone beyond all that. No, these immense
surprises that were lurking just before us, these astounding miracles
that were to rise before our eyes, would come in the unfolding of the
powers in men's minds, working free and ranging wide, with a deep
resistless onward rush--in the stirring times of peace!

And we were not only to see great things but we were all to do them!
That was the very keynote of the place. Here a fellow could certainly
write if only he had it in him. Impatiently I slaved at my French. Five
hours sleep was plenty.

In the small apartment we had taken just on the edge of the Luxembourg
Gardens, on the nights when we were working at home, one of us