though the world had nothing to offer Paris which it did not already have--even the joy of simple labor amid great beauty. I could have settled in a small house in Issy and worked as a laborer in a perfume factory, carrying my dinner pail with me every morning, with a right good-will--or such was the mood of the moment. This morning, on our way to St.-Étienne-du-Mont and the cathedral, we examined the bookstalls along the Seine and tried to recall off-hand the interesting comment that had been made on them by great authors and travelers. My poor wit brought back only the references of Balzac; but Barfleur was livelier with thoughts from Rousseau to George Moore. They have a magnificent literary history; but it is only because they are on the banks of the Seine, in the center of this whirling pageant of life, that they are so delighted. To enjoy them one has to be in an idle mood and love out-of-doors; for they consist of a dusty row of four-legged boxes with lids coming quite to your chest in height, and reminding one of those high-legged counting-tables at which clerks sit on tall stools making entries in their ledgers. These boxes are old and paintless and weather-beaten; and at night the very dusty-looking keepers, who from early morning until dark have had their shabby-backed wares spread out where dust and sunlight and wind and rain can attack them, pack them in the body of the box on which they are lying and close the lid. You can always see an idler or two here--perhaps many idlers--between the Quai d’Orsay and the Quai Voltaire.