clattered and slipped over the tiled floor after a polite
attendant, through its many show-rooms, and among its wilderness of
pottery, ancient and modern. The manufactory was established by--I'm
sure I don't know whom--in seventeen hundred and--something, at
Vincennes, quite the other side of Paris; but a few years later, in the
reign of Louis XV., was transferred to Sevres, and put under the
direction of government. It is almost impossible to gain permission to
visit the workshops, but a permit to pass through the show-rooms can
easily be obtained. There were queer old-fashioned attempts at glazed
ware here, some of them adorned with pictures like those we used to see
in our grandmothers' china closets, of puffy little pink gentlemen and
ladies ambling over a pink foreground; a pink mountain, of pyramidal
form, rising from the wide-rimmed hat of the roseate gentlemen; a pink
lake standing on end at the feet of the lady, and a little pink house,
upon which they might both have sat comfortably, with a few clouds of
jeweller's cotton completing the picture. A striking contrast were these
to the marvels of frailty and grace of later times. The rooms were hung
with paintings upon porcelain, the burial of Attila, which we had seen
at the Louvre, among them. Every conceivable model of vase, pitcher, and
jar was here--quaint, beautiful conceptions of form adorned by the hand
of skilful artists, from mammoth vases, whirling upon stationary
pedestals, to the most delicate cup that ever touched red lips.

At noon we strolled over to St. Cloud, a pleasant walk of a mile,
beginning with a shaded avenue, rough as a country road; then on, down a
street leading to the gates of the park of St. Cloud--a street so vain
of its destination that it was actually lifted up above the gardens on
either side. From the wide gates we passed into a labyrinth of shaded,
clean-swept ways, and followed one to the avenue of the fountains, where
we sat upon the edge of a stone basin to await the opening of the
palace. For do not imagine, dear reader, that you can run in and out of
palaces without ceremony and at all hours of the day. There is an
appointed time; there is the gathering outside of the curious; there is
the coming of a man with rattling, ringing keys; there is the throwing
open of wide gates and massive doors, and then--and not until then--the
entering in. As for the fountains, next to those at Versailles they have
been widely celebrated; b