I have not loved Paris as a Parisian, but as an American; perhaps it is a stretch of words to say I love Paris at all. I used to love to go there and to behold the majesty of France. I have always liked to mark the startling contrasts of light and shade. I have always known what all the world now knows, that beneath the gayety of the French there burns a patriotic and consuming fire, a high sense of public honor; a fine spirit of self-sacrifice along with the sometimes too aggressive spirit of freedom. In 1873 I saw them two blocks long and three files deep upon the Rue St. Honore press up to the Bank of France, old women and old men with their little all tied in handkerchiefs and stockings to take up the tribute required by Bismarck to rid the soil of the detested German. They did it. Alone they did it--the French people--the hard-working, frugal, loyal commonalty of France--without asking the loan of a sou from the world outside.
Writing of that last Sunday in the Bois de Boulogne, I find by recurring to the record that I said: "There is a deal more of good than bad in every Nation. I take off my hat to the French. But, I have had my fling and I am quite ready to go home. Even amid the gayety and the glare, the splendor of color and light, the Hungarian band wafting to the greenery and the stars the strains of the delicious waltz, La Veuve Joyeuse her very self--yea, many of her--tapping the time at many adjacent tables, the song that fills my heart is 'Hame, Hame, Hame!--Hame to my ain countree.' Yet, to come again, d'ye mind? I should be loath to say good-by forever to the Bois de Boulogne. I want to come back to Paris. I always want to come back to Paris. One needs not to make an apology or give a reason.
"We turn rather sadly away from Pré Catalan and the Café Cascade. We glide adown the flower-bordered path and out from the clusters of Chinese lanterns, and leave the twinkling groves to their music and merry-making. Yonder behind us, like a sentinel, rises Mont Valerien. Before us glimmer the lamps of uncountable coaches, as our own, veering toward the city, the moon just topping the tower of St. Jacques de la Boucherie and silver-plating the bronze figures upon the Arch of Stars.
