Some arch,
that, isn't it? Yes, sir--down from there to the Place de la Concorde
and back again, around the Arch and on to the Bois. And there's a sight
for a man, too! To sit out on the Bois sidewalk, M'sieu, your chair
almost under the bushes, and watch those cabs and autos in the late
afternoon, coming on dark. Count them? No more than you could count
fire-flies of an evening in the West Indies--like one string of light."
"Mon Dieu! Come to the inner room, if you please, sir, and tell me more.
What a good angel which has sent you here! Twenty-five years since I
have seen my Paris. And the Tuileries, my friend, is it yet the same?"
"Just the same, M'sieu, a million bare-legged children with short white
socks running wild, and another half a million nurses with white caps
running wild after them. And the Eiffel Tower! But that's since your
time, M'sieu Perrault?"
"Ah--h, but have I not heard? Continue, continue, if you please, sir.
You bring a strange joy to my heart. The Louvre, for example--you have
been there, yes?"
"Been there? Yes, and 'most googoo-eyed from looking at the pictures
there--miles of 'em, aren't there?"
"Oh-h! and Mona Lisa--yes!"
"That dark one with the queer kind of a smile? She must have had green
eyes, that one--green eyes with lights in them. And she kept them all
guessing, I'll bet a hat, when she was alive--" and Bowen ran on till
every blessed breakwater man silently stole away.
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