sed the painful contrast between affluence and want,
here I had found the true union of riches and poverty. Hearty good-will
had smoothed down the more rugged inequalities on both sides, and had
opened a road of true neighborhood and fellowship between the humble
workshop and the stately mansion. Instead of hearkening to the voice of
interest, they had both listened to that of self-sacrifice, and there was
no place left for contempt or envy. Thus, instead of the beggar in rags,
that I had seen at the other door cursing the rich man, I had found here
the happy child of the laborer loaded with flowers and blessing him! The
problem, so difficult and so dangerous to examine into with no regard but
for the rights of it, I had just seen solved by love.

CHAPTER V

COMPENSATION

Sunday, May 27th

Capital cities have one thing peculiar to them: their days of rest seem
to be the signal for a general dispersion and flight. Like birds that are
just restored to liberty, the people come out of their stone cages, and
joyfully fly toward the country. It is who shall find a green hillock for
a seat, or the shade of a wood for a shelter; they gather May flowers,
they run about the fields; the town is forgotten until the evening, when
they return with sprigs of blooming hawthorn in their hats, and their
hearts gladdened by pleasant thoughts and recollections of the past day;
the next day they return again to their harness and to work.

These rural adventures are most remarkable at Paris. When the fine
weather comes, clerks, shop keepers, and workingmen look forward
impatiently for the Sunday as the day for trying a few hours of this
pastoral life; they walk through six miles of grocers' shops and
public-houses in the faubourgs, in the sole hope of finding a real
turnip-field. The father of a family begins the practical education of
his son by showing him wheat which has not taken the form of a loaf, and
cabbage "in its wild state." Heaven only knows the encounters, the
discoveries, the adventures that are met with! What Parisian has not had
his Odyssey in an excursion through the suburbs, and would not be able to
write a companion to the famous Travels by Land and by Sea from Paris to
St. Cloud?

We do not now speak of that floating population from all parts, for whom
our French Babylon is the caravansary of Europe: a phalanx of thinkers,
artists, men of business, and travellers, who, like Homer's hero, have
arrived in their