was typical of what the comfort-seeking visitor, somewhat initiate,
might find before the modern tourist onrush overflowed all bounds and
effaced the ancient landmarks--or should I say townmarks?--making a
resort instead of a home of the gay French capital. The d'Orient was
delightfully comfortable and fabulously cheap.

The wayfarer entered a darksome passage that led to an inner court.
There were on the four sides of this seven or eight stories pierced
by many windows. There was never a lift, or what we Americans call an
elevator. If you wanted to go up you walked up; and after dark
your single illuminant was candlelight. The service could hardly be
recommended, but cleanliness herself could find no fault with the
beds and bedding; nor any queer people about; changeless; as still and
stationary as a nook in the Rockies.

A young girl might dwell there year in and year out in perfect
safety--many young girls did so--madame a kind of duenna. The food--for
it was a _pension_--was all a gourmet could desire. And the wine!

I was lunching with an old Parisian friend.

"What do you think of this vintage?" says he.

"Very good," I answered. "Come and dine with me to-morrow and I will
give you the mate to it."

"What--at the d'Orient?"

"Yes, at the d'Orient."

"Preposterous!"

Nevertheless, he came. When the wine was poured out he took a sip.

"By ----!" he exclaimed. "That is good, isn't it? I wonder where they
got it? And how?"

During the week after we had it every day. Then no more. The headwaiter,
with many apologies, explained that he had found those few bottles in a
forgotten bin, where they had lain for years, and he begged a thousand
pardons of monsieur, but we had drunk them all--_rien du plus_--no more.
I might add that precisely the same thing happened to me at the Hotel
Continental. Indeed, it is not uncommon with the French caravansaries
to keep a little extra good wine in stock for those who can distinguish
between an _ordinaire_ and a _superieur_, and are willing to pay the
price.

III

"See Naples and die," say the Italians. "See Paris and live," say the
French. Old friends, who have been over and back, have been of late
telling me that Paris, having woefully suffered, is nowise the Paris it
was, and as the provisional offspring of four years of desolating war
I can well believe them. But a year or two of peace, and the city will
rise again, as after the Franco-Prussian War and the Com