Page:An International Episode (New York, Harper & Brothers, 1879).djvu/66

60 The young Englishmen spent the whole of that day and the whole of many successive days in what the French call the intimité of their new friends. They agreed that it was extremely jolly, that they had never known any thing more agreeable. It is not proposed to narrate minutely the incidents of their sojourn on this charming shore; though if it were convenient I might present a record of impressions none the less delectable that they were not exhaustively analyzed. Many of them still linger in the minds of our travellers, attended by a train of harmonious images—images of brilliant mornings on lawns and piazzas that overlooked the sea; of innumerable pretty girls; of infinite lounging and talking and laughing and flirting and lunching and dining; of universal friendliness and frankness; of occasions on which they knew every one and every thing, and had an extraordinary sense of ease; of drives and rides in the late afternoon over gleaming beaches, on long sea-roads, beneath a sky lighted up by marvellous sunsets; of suppers, on the return, informal, irregular, agreeable; of evenings at open windows or on the perpetual verandas, in the summer starlight, above the warm Atlantic. The young Englishmen were introduced to every body, entertained by every body, intimate with every