ship, we
should never have known that we were not in the most Christian of all
Christian cities. It is by no means imperative to do in Rome as the
Romans do, and one need not in Paris drink absinthe or visit the Jardin
Mabille.

Our first expedition was to the banker's and to the shops, and having
replenished our purse and wardrobe, we were prepared to besiege the
city. There was a day or two of rest in the gilded chairs, cushioned
with blue satin, of our pretty _salon_, whence we peeped down upon the
street below between the yellow satin curtains that draped its wide
French window; or rolled our eyes meditatively to the delicately tinted
ceiling, with its rose-colored clouds skimmed by tiny, impossible birds;
or made abortive attempts to penetrate the secrets of the buhl cabinets,
and to guess at the time from the pretty clocks of disordered organism;
or admired ourselves in the mirrors which gazed at each other from
morning till night, for our apartments in the little Hotel Friedland we
found most charming.

You will hardly care for a description of the dozen, more or less,
churches, old, new, and restored, with which we began and ended our
sight-seeing in Paris, where we looked upon sculptured saints without
number, and studied ecclesiastical architecture to more than our hearts'
content. There was St. Germain L'Auxerrois, the wicked old bell of which
tolled the signal for the massacre of St. Bartholomew. We stood with the
_bonnes_ and babies under the trees of the square before it, gazing up
at the belfry with most severe countenances,--and learned, afterwards,
that the bell had been long since removed! There was the Madeleine of
more recent date, built in the form of a Greek temple, and interesting
just now for having been the church of Father Hyacinthe, to which we
could for a time find no entrance. We shook the iron gate; we inquired
in excellent English of a French shopkeeper, and found at last an open
gateway, a little unlocked door, beyond which we spent a time of search
and inquiry in darkness, and among wood, and shavings, and broken
chairs, and holy dust-pans, before passing around and entering the great
bronze doors. There were the Pantheon and St. Sulpice, grand and
beautiful, erected piously from the proceeds of lotteries. There was St.
Etienne du Mont, and within one of its chapels the gilded tomb of the
patron saint of Paris--St. Genevieve. Who she was, or what she did to
gain this rather unenviable