* * * * *

Yes, that was a memorable holiday; the charming fete de St. Cloud
was in full swing--it was delightful to haunt it once more with
those dear young people so little dreamt of when Barty and I first
got into scrapes there, and were duly punished by Latin verbs to
conjugate in our best handwriting for Bonzig or Dumollard.

Then he and I would explore the so changed Bois de Boulogne for the
little "Mare aux Biches," where his father had fallen under the
sword of Lieutenant Rondelys; but we never managed to find it:
perhaps it had evaporated; perhaps the does had drunk it all up,
before they, too, had been made to vanish, before the German
invader--or inside him; for he was fond of French venison, as well
as of French clocks! He was a most omnivorous person.

Then Paris had endless charms for us both, and we relieved ourselves
at last of that long homesickness of years, and could almost believe
we were boys again, as we dived into such old and well-remembered
streets as yet remained.

There were still some slums we had loved; one or two of them exist
even now. Only the other day I saw the Rue de Clery, the Rue de la
Lune, the Rue de la Montagne--all three on the south side of the
Boulevard Bonne Nouvelle: they are still terrible to look at from
the genial Boulevard, even by broad daylight--the houses so tall, so
irregular, the streets so narrow and winding and black. They seemed
to us boys terrible, indeed, between eight and nine on a winter's
evening, with just a lamp here and there to make their darkness
visible. Whither they led I can't say; we never dared explore their
obscure and mysterious recesses. They may have ended in the _cour
des miracles_ for all we knew--it was nearly fifty years ago--and
they may be quite virtuous abodes of poverty to-day; but they seemed
to us then strange, labyrinthine abysses of crime and secret dens of
infamy, where dreadful deeds were done in the dead of long winter
nights. Evidently, to us in those days, whoever should lose himself
there would never see daylight again; so we loved to visit them
after dark, with our hearts in our mouths, before going back to
school.

We would sit on posts within call of the cheerful Boulevard, and watch
mysterious women hurry up and down in the cold, out of darkness into
light and back again, poor creatures--dingy moths, silent but ominous
night-jars, forlorn women of the town--ill-favored and ill-dressed