Page:In a winter city, by Ouida.djvu/117

 anything, dear old fellow—and he would be very likely to say all sorts of foolish things while there was not the slightest reason for any one's supposing.

"Do come out here as soon as you can," she wrote instead. "Of course it will all depend on your racing engagements; but if you do go to Paris to see Charles Lafitte, as you say, pray come on here. Not that you will care for Floralia at all; you never do care for these art cities, and it is its art, and its past, and its people that make its irresistible charm. Floralia is so graceful and so beautiful and so full of noble memories that one cannot but feel the motley society of our own present day as a sort of desecration to it; the cocottes and cocodettes, the wheel-skaters and poker-players, the smokers and the baigneuses, the viveurs and the viveuses of our time suit it sadly ill; it wants the scholars of Academe, the story-tellers of Boccaccio; it wants Sordello and Stradella, Desdemona and Giulietta.

"One feels oneself not one half good enough for the stones one treads upon; life here