eurs--would
they direct him?"

When he came out on the Place de la Concorde at four o'clock he was
actually the only speck visible in the great circle. He stopped,
enchanted, to look about him. The imaginative and inadequate picture of
the Place de la Concorde his idea had drawn, faded. The light mists of
the morning swept up the Avenue des Champs Elysees, and there stood out
before his eyes the lines of the Triumphal Arch, which to Antony said:
Napoleon!

On the left stretched gardens toward a great palace, all that has been
left to France and the glory which was her doom.

From the spectral line of the Louvre, his eyes came back to the
melancholy statues that rose near him--Strassburg, Luxemburg, Alsace
and Lorraine. Huge iron wreaths hung about their bases, wreaths that
blossomed as he looked, like flowers of blood and lilies of death.

Then in front of him the calm, rose-hued obelisk lifted its finger, and
once again the shadow of Egypt fell across the heart of a modern city.
To Antony, the obelisk had an affinity with the Abydos Sphinx, but this
obelisk did not rest on the backs of four bronze creatures!

The small cabs continued to tinkle slowly across the Place; a group of
young fellows passed by, singing on their way to the Latin Quarter, from
some fete in Montmartre--they were students going home before morning.
In the distance, here and there, were a few foot passengers like
himself, but to Antony it seemed that he was alone in Paris. And in the
fresh beginning of a day untried and momentous, the city was like a
personality. In the summer softness, in the tender, agreeable light, the
welcome to him was caressing and as lovely as New York had been brutal.

Antony resumed his way to the river, followed the quays where at his
side the Seine ran along, reddening in the summer's sunrise. Along the
river, when he crossed the Pont des Arts, he saw the stirring of
Parisian life. He went on down the quays, past quaint old houses whose
traditions and history he wanted to know, turned off into a dark
street--la Rue Mazarine. He smiled as he read the sign. What had this
narrow Parisian alley to do with him? He had adopted it out of caprice,
distinguished it from all Paris.

He scanned the shops and houses; many were still closed, neither
milk-shops nor antiquity dealers suggested shelter. A modest sign over a
dingy-looking building caught his eye. In the courtyard, in green wooden
tubs, flourished two bay-trees.