ght the release from the everlasting pillory of art. It was
the hour of releases, and I found myself in a moment in the midst of a
"classic revival," whimsical beyond description. Aeneas hastened to
deposit his aged father in a heap on the gravel and ran after the Sylvan
Nymphs; Theseus gave the Minotaur a respite; Themistocles was bending
over the dying Spartan, who was coming to life; Venus Pudica was waltzing
about the diagonal basin with Antinous; Ascanius was playing marbles with
the infant Hercules. In this unreal phantasmagoria it was a relief to me
to see walking in the area of the private garden two men: the one a
stately person with a kingly air, a handsome face, his head covered with
a huge wig that fell upon his shoulders; the other a farmer-like man,
stout and ungracious, the counterpart of the pictures of the intendant
Colbert. He was pointing up to the palace, and seemed to be speaking of
some alterations, to which talk the other listened impatiently. I
wondered what Napoleon, who by this time was probably dreaming of Mexico,
would have said if he had looked out and seen, not one man in the garden,
but dozens of men, and all the stir that I saw; if he had known, indeed,
that the Great Monarch was walking under his windows.

I said it was a relief to me to see two real men, but I had no reason to
complain of solitude thereafter till daybreak. That any one saw or
noticed me I doubt, and I soon became so reassured that I had more
delight than fear in watching the coming and going of personages I had
supposed dead a hundred years and more; the appearance at windows of
faces lovely, faces sad, faces terror-stricken; the opening of casements
and the dropping of billets into the garden; the flutter of disappearing
robes; the faint sounds of revels from the interior of the palace; the
hurrying of feet, the flashing of lights, the clink of steel, that told
of partings and sudden armings, and the presence of a king that will be
denied at no doors. I saw through the windows of the long Galerie de
Diane the roues of the Regency at supper, and at table with them a dark,
semi-barbarian little man in a coat of Russian sable, the coolest head in
Europe at a drinking-bout. I saw enter the south pavilion a tall lady in
black, with the air of a royal procuress; and presently crossed the
garden and disappeared in the pavilion a young Parisian girl, and then
another and another, a flock of innocents, and I thought instantly of