will take one of the "bateaux mouches" back to Paris.

Dear Paris--the Paris of youth, of love, and of romance!

* * * * *

The pulse of the Quarter begins really to beat at 6 P.M. At this hour
the streets are alive with throngs of workmen--after their day's work,
seeking their favorite cafes to enjoy their aperitifs with their
comrades--and women hurrying back from their work, many to their homes
and children, buying the dinner en route.

Henriette, who sews all day at one of the fashionable dressmakers' in
the rue de la Paix, trips along over the Pont Neuf to her small room in
the Quarter to put on her best dress and white kid slippers, for it is
Bullier night and she is going to the ball with two friends of her
cousin.

In the twilight, and from my studio window the swallows, like black
cinders against the yellow sky, dart and swoop above the forest of
chimney-pots and tiled and gabled roofs.

It is the hour to dine, and with this thought uppermost in every one's
mind studio doors are slammed and night-keys tucked in pockets. And arm
in arm the poet and the artist swing along to that evening Mecca of good
Bohemians--the Boulevard St. Michel.

[Illustration: (basket of flowers)]

CHAPTER II

THE BOULEVARD ST. MICHEL

From the Place St. Michel, this ever gay and crowded boulevard ascends a
long incline, up which the tired horses tug at the traces of the
fiacres, and the big double-decked steam trams crawl, until they reach
the Luxembourg Gardens,--and so on a level road as far as the Place de
l'Observatoire. Within this length lies the life of the "Boul' Miche."

Nearly every highway has its popular side, and on the "Boul' Miche" it
is the left one, coming up from the Seine. Here are the cafes, and from
5 P.M. until long past midnight, the life of the Quartier pours by
them--students, soldiers, families, poets, artists, sculptors, wives,
and sweethearts; bicycle girls, the modern grisette, the shop girl, and
the model; fakirs, beggars, and vagrants. Yet the word vagrant is a
misnomer in this city, where economy has reached a finesse that is
marvelous. That fellow, in filth and rags, shuffling along, his eyes
scrutinizing, like a hungry rat, every nook and corner under the cafe
tables on the terrace, carries a stick spiked with a pin. The next
instant, he has raked the butt of your discarded cigarette from beneath
your feet with the dexterity of a croupier. The butt he adds to