During all this, Barfleur was in the heyday of his Parisian glory, and appropriately cheerful. We took a taxi through singing streets lighted by a springtime sun and came finally to the Restaurant Prunier where it was necessary for him to secure a table and order dinner in advance; and thence to the Théâtre des Capucines in the Rue des Capucines, where tickets for a farce had to be secured, and thence to a bar near the Avenue de l’Opéra where we were to meet the previously mentioned Mme. de B. who, out of the goodness of her heart, was to help entertain me while I was in the city. This remarkable woman who by her beauty, simplicity, utter frankness, and moody immorality would shock the average woman into a deadly fear of life and make a horror of what seems a gaudy pleasure world to some, quite instantly took my fancy. Yet I think it was more a matter of Mme. de B.’s attitude, than it was the things which she did, which made it so terrible. But that is a long story. [Illustration: One of the thousands upon thousands of cafés on the boulevards of Paris] We came to her out of the whirl of the “green hour,” when the Paris boulevards in this vicinity were fairly swarming with people--the gayest world I have ever seen. We have enormous crowds in New York, but they seem to be going somewhere very much more definitely than in Paris. With us there is an eager, strident, almost objectionable effort to get home or to the theater or to the restaurant which one can easily resent--it is so inconsiderate and indifferent. In London you do not feel that there are any crowds that are going to the theaters or the restaurants; and if they are, they are not very cheerful about it; they are enduring life; they have none of the lightness of the Parisian world. I think it is all explained by the fact that Parisians feel keenly that they are living now and that they wish to enjoy themselves as they go. The American and the Englishman--the Englishman much more than the American--have decided that they are going to live in the future. Only the American is a little angry about his decision and the Englishman a little meek or patient. They both feel that life is intensely grim. But the Parisian, while he may feel or believe it, decides wilfully to cast it off. He lives by the way, out of books, restaurants, theaters, boulevards, and the spectacle of life generally. The Parisians move briskly, and they come out where they can see each other--out into the great wide-sidewalked boulevards and the thousands upon thousands of cafés; and make themselves comfortable and talkative and gay on the streets. It is so obvious that everybody is having a good time--not trying to have it; that they are enjoying the wine-like air, the cordials and _apéritifs_ of the _brasseries_, the net-like movements of the cabs, the dancing lights of the roadways, and the flare of the shops. It may be chill or drizzling in Paris, but you scarcely feel it.