I was interested in this neighborhood, as we hurried through and away from it to the Ile-de-la-Cité and Notre-Dame, as being not only a center for art strugglers of the Latin Quarter, but also for students of the Sorbonne. I was told that there were thousands upon thousands of them from various countries--eight thousand from Russia alone. How they live my informant did not seem to know, except that in the main they lived very badly. Baths, clean linen, and three meals a day, according to him, were not at all common; and in the majority of instances they starve their way through, going back to their native countries to take up the practice of law, medicine, politics and other professions. After Oxford and the American universities, this region and the Sorbonne itself, I found anything but attractive. The church of St.-Étienne-du-Mont is as fine as possible, a type of the kind of architecture which is no type and ought to have a new name--modern would be as good as any. It has a creamish-gray effect, exceedingly ornate, with all the artificery of a jewel box. The Panthéon seemed strangely bare to me, large and spacious but cold. The men who are not there as much as the men who are, made it seem somewhat unrepresentative to me as a national mausoleum. It is hard to make a national burying-ground that will appeal to all. Notre-Dame after Canterbury and Amiens seems a little heavy but as contrasted with St. Paul’s in London and anything existing in America, it seemed strangely wonderful. I could not help thinking of Hugo’s novel and of St. Louis and Napoleon and the French Revolution in connection with it. It is so heavy and somber and so sadly great. The Hôtel Dieu, the Palais de Justice, Sainte-Chapelle and the Pont-Saint-Michel all in the same neighborhood interested me much, particularly Sainte-Chapelle--to me one of the most charming exteriors and interiors I saw in Paris. It is exquisite--this chapel which was once the scene of the private prayers of a king. This whole neighborhood somehow--from the bookstalls to Sainte-Chapelle suggested Balzac and Hugo and the flavor of this world as they presented it, was in my mind.