After four miles more, over a broad straight avenue, paved in the centre and edged with trees, we arrived at the port of St. Denis. I was exceedingly struck with the grandeur of the gate as we passed under, and, referring to the guide-book, I find it was a triumphal arch erected to Louis XIV., and the one by which the kings of France invariably enter. This also was restored by Napoleon, with his infallible taste, without changing its design: and it is singular how everything that great man touched became his own--for, who remembers for whom it was raised while he is told who employed his great intellect in its repairs?
I entered Paris on Sunday at eleven o'clock. I never should have recognized the day. The shops were all open, the artificers all at work, the unintelligible criers vociferating their wares, and the people in their working-day dresses. We wound through street after street, narrow and dark and dirty, and with my mind full of the splendid views of squares, and columns, and bridges, as I had seen them in the prints, I could scarce believe I was in Paris. A turn brought us into a large court, that of the Messagerie, the place at which all travellers are set down on arrival. Here my baggage was once more inspected, and, after a half-hour's delay, I was permitted to get into a _fiacre_, and drive to a hotel. As one is a specimen of all, I may as well describe the _Hotel d'Etrangers_, Rue Vivienne, which, by the way, I take the liberty at the same time to recommend to my friends. It is the precise centre for the convenience of sight-seeing, admirably kept, and, being nearly opposite Galignani's, that bookstore of Europe, is a very pleasant resort for the half hour before dinner, or a rainy day. I went there at the instance of my friend the _diplomat_.
The _fiacre_ stopped before an arched passage, and a fellow in livery, who had followed me from the Messagerie (probably in the double character of porter and police agent, as my passport was yet to be demanded), took my trunk into a small office on the left, over which was written "_Concierge_." This person, who is a kind of respectable doorkeeper, addressed me in broken English, without waiting for the evidence of my tongue, that I was a foreigner, and, after inquiring at what price I would have a room, introduced me to the landlady, who took me across a large court (the houses are built _round_ the yard always in France), to the corresponding story of the house. The room was quite pretty, with its looking-glasses and curtains, but there was no carpet, and the fireplace was ten feet deep. I asked to see another, and another, and another; they were all curtains and looking-glasses, and stone-floors! There is no wearying a French woman, and I pushed my modesty till I found a chamber to my taste--a nutshell, to be sure, but carpeted--and bowing my polite housekeeper out, I rang for breakfast and was at home in Paris.