Page:The Galaxy, Volume 5.djvu/486



HAT is this worldly spell of Paris, sister?" writes Cornelia, an investigating Christian (wife of the Rev. H. Bunyan Constant, settled in Marblehead), to her elder maiden relative, who remains at home, and convinced that Paris is synonymous with perdition. "Horatio and I," continues the chaste Cornelia, have seen the Tuileries and the monuments, the Louvre and the paintings, and have done Sévres, the Gobelins, and the arts in general. We have made few acquaintances here, but have peeped in at the opera, the gardens, and Philippe's. Horatio, too, presented to the Emperor his translation of the book of Job, and we went to Court at Compiégne. All this, we agreed, was wonderful, or grand, or naughty, or gay, and that the environs of Paris are superb; still we found no spell, my dear!"

"What is the mysterious spell of Paris?" repeated to me the unfearing Mrs. C., as she, Horatio and myself stood at a window of Madrid, looking down upon the park and the diners in the open air. "You, who are so fanatically French, can tell me what draws Americans from many larger cities than Marblehead to take up their abode in modern Babylon." And Horatio smiled through his spectacles his acquiescence in the queries of his catechising spouse. I cleared my throat and said: "The spell of Paris, madam, is the French themselves, who are born a civil people. Their geniality makes them charming folks to live among, just as a sunny morning contents a peevish child. Their politeness engenders amiability, and an amiable man is near of kin to a kind-hearted one. Courtesy is parcel of their nature, as the smile is a feature of their face. The very peasant is reared to know his station, and is proud and proficient in the manners that befit it. Such u all the spell, madam, according to my idea.

"We are a travelled people, yet hold general notions about other people that assuredly are often primitive. About European, or, more especially, Continental society, our minds were long since made up, and sometimes upon most imperfect data. The flippant correspondents of newspapers and magazines do more toward vitiating a superficial appreciation than the residence in Europe of our cultured or moneyed countrymen can effect to correct or strengthen it. The old prejudice as to the sabler dye of French immorality is as firm and broadcast to-day, and our conviction as to the purer sphere in which we float ourselves as sure, as