is occupation, with the eulogy upon Messrs. X. & Y.

CHAPTER VIII.

SHOW PLACES IN THE SUBURBS OF PARIS.

The river omnibuses.--Sevres and its
porcelain.--St. Cloud as it was.--The crooked
little town.--Versailles.--Eugenie's "spare
bedroom."--The queen who played she was a farmer's
wife.--Seven miles of paintings.--The portraits of
the presidents.

THERE are four ways of going to St. Cloud, from Paris, says the
guide-book; we chose the fifth, and took one of the little
steamboats--the river omnibuses--that follow the course of the Seine,
stopping at the piers along the city, which occur almost as often as the
street crossings. Very insignificant little steamers they are, made up
of puff, and snort, and smoke, a miniature deck, and a man with a big
bell. Up the river we steamed through a mist that hid everything but the
green banks, the pretty villas whose lawns drabbled their skirts in the
river, and after a time the islands that seemed to have dropped cool,
wet, and green into the middle of the stream. We plunged beneath the
dark arches of the stone bridges--the Pont d'Alma not to be forgotten,
with its colossal sentinels on either side of the middle arch, calm,
white, and still, leaning upon their muskets, their feet almost dipping
into the water, their great, stony eyes gazing away down the river.
What is it they seem to see beyond the bend? What is it they watch and
wait for, gun in hand? We pulled our wraps about us, found a sheltered
place, and went on far beyond our destination, through the gray vapor
that gathered sometimes into great, plashing drops to fall upon the
deck, or, hovering in mid-air, wiped out the distance from the landscape
as effectually as the sweep of a painter's brush, while it softened and
spiritualized everything near, from the sharply outlined eaves, and
gables, and narrow windows of the village struggling up from the water,
to the shadowy span of the bridges that seemed to rest upon air. Then
down with the rain and the current we swept again, to land at the
forsaken pier of Sevres, from which we made our way over the pavings, so
inviting in these French towns for missile or barricade, to the
porcelain factory. No fear of missing it, since it is the one object of
interest to strangers in the town; and whatever question we asked, the
reply would have been the pointing of the finger in that one direction.
Once there, we