It is really too bad to tease our Quaker lady; but she takes it all so literally and is so charmingly good-humored withal that it is a temptation not easy to resist. We are making the most of our few days in Paris, as we leave here early next week. Lydia announced at breakfast that she felt it _her_ duty, and she hoped that we should feel it to be ours to make a pilgrimage to St. Denis this afternoon. "After enjoying ourselves in the chateaux of the Kings and Queens of France, it is," she says, "the very least that we can do to go to St. Denis and see them decently and honorably buried." Miss Cassandra quite agreed with Lydia, and Archie, although he says that it is a ghoulish sort of expedition, would go anywhere with her, of course. It is rather odd that none of us have ever been to St. Denis, not even Ian McIvor who lived in Paris for months while he was studying medicine. We set forth this afternoon in truly democratic fashion on top of a tram, on one of the double-deckers that they have over here, to Angela's great delight. A rather lively party we were, I must admit, despite the sobriety of our errand. There was nothing that especially interested us in the prosperous manufacturing town of St. Denis, and we went directly to the basilica, which with the mingling of the Romanesque and Gothic in its architecture is much more beautiful than we had expected. It is sufficiently ancient to satisfy our antiquarian taste, as the site of the original abbey dates back to 275, having been erected over the remains of St. Dionysius or St. Denis. The present edifice owes its existence to the Abbe Suger who reigned here in the days of Saint Louis. There have been many restorations, of course, and some very bad ones as late as the reign of Napoleon Bonaparte. In this basilica the Emperor Napoleon was married to the Archduchess Marie Louise and, what is more interesting to us, here Joan of Arc hung up her arms, in 1429. It is wonderful to see the monuments to royalties as far back in French history as Queen Fredegonde and King Dagobert, who founded an abbey here as early as 638. The tomb of Dagobert is a most remarkable and realistic representation of the King's soul leaving his body and its reception in heaven; the means of transportation is a boat with oarsmen, both going and coming, if I may so express it, that is the soul of Dagobert goes forth upon the unknown sea in a boat, and in another carving on the tomb he is welcomed to the shores of heaven, still in a boat. It is very interesting, as there is a poetic as well as a realistic side to the strange conception. Near Dagobert's monument some one had left a visiting card, after the curious French fashion. "It seemed so very late in the day to be calling upon King Dagobert," as Walter remarked.