, gave them a
very picturesque air. These had not seen me in Russia, nor had they
heard of me; they were probably from Novogorod. Like the girls they were
children, but in a greater degree, for they had not been flattered, and
kind words delighted them so that they clapped their hands. They began
to hum gypsy songs, and had I not prevented it they would have run at
once and brought a guitar, and improvised a small concert for me _al
fresco_. I objected to this, not wishing to take part any longer in such
a very public exhibition. For the _gobe-mouches_ and starers, noticing a
stranger talking with _ces zigains_, had begun to gather in a dense crowd
around us, and the two ladies and the gentleman who were with us were
seriously inconvenienced. We endeavored to step aside, but the multitude
stepped aside also, and would not let us alone. They were French, but
they might have been polite. As it was, they broke our merry conference
up effectively, and put us to flight.

"Do let us come and see you, _rya_," said the younger boy. "We will
sing, for I can really sing beautifully, and we like you so much. Where
do you live?"

I could not invite them, for I was about to leave Paris, as I then
supposed. I have never seen them since, and there was no adventure and
no strange scenery beyond the thousands of lights and guests and trees
and voices speaking French. Yet to this day the gay boyishness, the
merry laughter, and the child-like _naivete_ of the promptly-formed
liking of those gypsy youths remains impressed on my mind with all the
color and warmth of an adventure or a living poem. Can you recall no
child by any wayside of life to whom you have given a chance smile or a
kind word, and been repaid with artless sudden attraction? For to all of
us,--yes, to the coldest and worst,--there are such memories of young
people, of children, and I pity him who, remembering them, does not feel
the touch of a vanished hand and hear a chord which is still. There are
adventures which we can tell to others as stories, but the best have no
story; they may be only the memory of a strange dog which followed us,
and I have one such of a cat who, without any introduction, leaped wildly
towards me, "and would not thence away." It is a good life which has
many such memories.

I was walking a day or two after with an English friend, who was also a
delegate to the International Literary Congress, in the Exhibition, when
we approach