The official with the white stick finally landed him on the curb before he became an obstruction to traffic. He sank into an inviting iron chair and ordered a drink, as he saw that that was what the Parisians used their sidewalks for. In answer to his labored French, there came back in the purest Irish: “Whisky, sor? Black and White, sor? Very good, sor!” “Well, I never!” he murmured, radiant with happiness. When the waiter reappeared with the drink, he was gazing down the broad avenue, entranced. “Where does that go?” he whispered to the waiter, thrusting a bill into the curving palm and pointing vaguely before him. “The Luver, sure, sor. You’ll be wanting a nurse before the day is done!” the Irishman muttered. And indeed the self-contained young American began to act like a lunatic let loose. Gulping down his whisky, he set off at random, plunging again into the sea of traffic, finally escaping to the shelter of a cab. The driver, after vain attempts to extract an intelligible order from his fare, just drove on and on through the boulevards, across great squares, up the noble avenue to the lofty arch, and then came back to the center of the city and stopped suggestively before a restaurant. Somehow Brainard managed to get fed, and then the fatherly cabby received him and bore him on through the gas-lighted streets, soft and lambent and vocal, and at the end of another hour deposited him in front of what Brainard took to be a theater—a modest-looking building enough. From the poster he saw that it was the Français. The great Théâtre Français! He beamed back at cabby, who gesticulated with his whip and urged him on. Cabby had begun sympathetically to comprehend his lunatic. They played _Cyrano_ that night, it happened. Though the fluent lines rolled too swiftly over Brainard’s head for his feeble comprehension of the language, he understood the wonderful actors. For the first time in the twenty-eight years of his existence, he realized what is art—what it is to conceive and represent life with living creatures, to clothe dull lines of print with human passions. This was what he had dreamed might be when he descended from his gallery seat in a Broadway theater—but what never was. Cabby was asleep on the box outside when Brainard emerged from his dream. At the young American’s touch, he awoke, and, chirping to his decrepit horse, bore the stranger to his hotel. At the door they exchanged vivid protestations of regard, and a couple of pieces of gold rolled into cabby’s paw. “He understood!” Brainard murmured gratefully. “_Demain_—_demain_!” he cried; and the _cocher_ cracked his whip.