A Saint-Blaize, a la Zuecca ...
Nous etions, nous etions bien la!
Mais de vous en souvenir
Prendrez-vous la peine?
Mais de vous en souvenir,
Et d'y revenir?
A Saint-Blaize, a la Zuecca ...
Vivre et mourir la!"

So sings Mrs. Trevor (Mary Josselin that was) in the richest,
sweetest voice I know. And behold! at last I have caught my little
French remembrance, just as the lamps are being lit--and I transfix
it with my pen and write it down....

And then with a sigh I scratch it all out again, sunny and funny as
it is. For it's all about a comical adventure I had with Palaiseau,
the sniffer at the fete de St.-Cloud--all about a tame magpie, a
gendarme, a blanchisseuse, and a volume of de Musset's poems, and
doesn't concern Barty in the least; for it so happened that Barty
wasn't there!

* * * * *

Thus, in the summer of 1851, Barty Josselin and I bade adieu forever
to our happy school life--and for a few years to our beloved
Paris--and for many years to our close intimacy of every hour in the
day.

I remember spending two or three afternoons with him at the great
exhibition in Hyde Park just before he went on a visit to his
grandfather, Lord Whitby, in Yorkshire--and happy afternoons they
were! and we made the most of them. We saw all there was to be seen
there, I think; and found ourselves always drifting back to the
"Amazon" and the "Greek Slave," for both of which Barty's admiration
was boundless.

And so was mine. They made the female fashions for 1851 quite
deplorable by contrast--especially the shoes, and the way of
dressing the hair; we almost came to the conclusion that female
beauty when unadorned is adorned the most. It awes and chastens one
so! and wakes up the knight-errant inside! even the smartest French
boots can't do this! not the pinkest silken hose in all Paris! Not
all the frills and underfrills and wonderfrills that M. Paul Bourget
can so eloquently describe!

My father had taken a house for us in Brunswick Square, next to the
Foundling Hospital. He was about to start an English branch of the
Vougeot-Conti firm in the City. I will not trouble the reader with
any details about this enterprise, which presented many difficulties
at first, and indeed rather crippled our means.

[Illustration:

"'QUAND ON PERD, PAR TRISTE OCCURRENCE,
SON ESPERANCE,
ET SA GAITE,
LE R