Page:Harper's New Monthly Magazine - v108.djvu/45

Rh the most striking of them all, one must remember that little over fifty years ago this public park was a forest, as wild, as unfrequented, as the St. Germain or Fontainebleau of to-day. The large and prosperous suburb of Boulogne was then the tiniest of towns, and its dead were buried where now all Paris revels. We are wont to speak of the New World cities as the scenes of curious transformations, but the half-century which has turned a country pasture into the centre of the American metropolis has here performed as great a miracle. There is but one difference. The admirable reverence which throughout Europe conserves the landmarks of the past is outbalanced in America by our hardly less admirable passion for burying beneath the footfalls of progress the indications of what has ceased to be essential. Yet, faithful to our creed though we may be, we cannot deny the tribute of respect for this principle of veneration. That in the very midst of a public playground the last resting-places of forgotten, unimportant individuals of a little country town are yet respected—is this not an enviable thing?

The cemetery of Boulogne lies in a little hollow, through the openings between whose cypresses the fortress of Mont-Valérien looms in the distance against the moon-silvered sky. The association is significant. This stronghold, of all those assailed by the battalions of Prussia, alone held out; this little graveyard, of all those marks of old Boulogne which the extended fingers of the great capital have touched and buried in oblivion, alone has maintained its integrity. The toppling tombstones, the moss-covered crosses, which repeat with senile obstinacy the immaterial virtues of men and women long forgotten, abide, revered and undisturbed. Past this quiet and mournful corner the great tide of unthinking gayety streams nightly. They sleep well, the dead of old Boulogne, but one could fancy them smiling, in those deep graves of theirs, at the rush of feet and the patter of hoofs and the whir of wheels in the great avenues overhead. Another fifty years and it will be these, the passers, who listen and smile—fortunate if their last bed is so respected. Armenonville, gay, careless, blazing with light and color, ringing with music and laughter—and the cypress-curtained graveyard. One might ask which in the truest sense is the lesson of the Bois de Boulogne.

But the hour of play is over. In all directions little tributary parties and drives contribute their share of merry-makers, homeward bound, until the main thoroughfares, the Allée de Longchamp and the Avenue de Hippodrome, are crowded to their fullest capacity. A freshet of gayety it is, surging cityward. The Japanese lanterns, and lamps of bicycles and automobiles, assembled by hundreds, add indescribably to the picturesqueness of the scene. Here and there stragglers, loath to bring their revel to a close, are pledging each other in a final bottle underneath the trees. They tempt fate with a sally as the crowd sweeps by, and are overwhelmed with badinage as a reward. No need of introductions here. The freemasonry of the Bois makes every man brother to the next. A third of the crowd is singing, and another third tangled in laughter like a kitten in a ball of wool. So the great stream rolls on, increased by fresh drops at every step, and with every drop re-enforced by another point of light, another smile, another snatch of song. Light, laughter, and music, until the very last; until the gates are reached and the multitude melts into the maze of the city's streets, these three key-notes of the Bois hold true.

But, even at Armenonville, what was flame is now no more than embers. Night, so long held back, like some stealthy animal, by the shouts and torches of the crowd, claims her own at last. It is as if a great company of elves, uproariously mirthful, have come and gone. The faintest possible echo of their singing lingers a moment on the air from the direction of the Porte Maillot. With the passing of a few luminous final drops the stream in the wide avenue runs dry. Music, light, and laughter. A far, faint chord of the one, a last winking gleam of the other, a broken scrap of the third, and Paris has vanished as she came.

One draws a deep breath, listens,—and hears the wind again: looks up,—and sees the stars! CVIII.-No. 643—6