We ran, as I have since ascertained, through Euston Square, Tavistock Square, Bloomsbury Square, Bedford Square, twice round Russell Square, and then somehow got back to Euston. Then John stopped. The fact was he was lost. But he put a bold front on the matter, and said we would go and dance with the London 'prentice lads and fair-haired Saxon maids, first at Westminster and then at Tower Green. He told me he had seen pictures in which the youth of Britain, in gaily-coloured attire, were shown dancing round garlanded and festooned poles. He fancied the sports were held at Westminster. But was sure some were held on Tower Hill. Was I brave enough to join the venture and risk the after-part? I was a nice, well-meaning boy, but before his dazzling array of temptations I fell at once. John knew a little English--learnt at the Lycée St. Louis--but, as he confided to me after several interviews with the ignorant Londoners, these persons did not understand their own tongue; and it seemed to take a long time to teach it them. So we trudged again through the dreadful, dreary, desolate squares, with their carefully railed regulation patches of soot-gardens, and indefinable, uniform air of hypochondriacal blight. I believe we should have walked round and round those grim and forbidding dwelling-boxes all day, had we not, after many attempts, discovered a man who knew a little French, and who offered to take us down to Westminster. John asked him about the Squares. "Are they barracks?" he said, "or workmen's dwellings?" "_Mais, non_," answered our guide, looking shocked, "they are the dwellings of the most respectable people." Again that mystic word "respectable." Again the atmosphere of dignified dumps and dingy sulkiness. And father had told us that "respectability" was "an honourable nature." London honour seemed a sad thing. The story of that day's spree ought to be published as a Sunday-school tract. It was the most chastening experience I ever underwent. A few months later we were in the midst of barricades and street massacres in Paris; but even that weird experience has left no such impression of blank and heavy gloom upon my memory as the dismal reconnaissance into the London Sabbath and British respectability whereof this is the true account. Those miles of deserted and colourless streets under the narrow glimpses of leaden sky, with the solitary heavy figure of the large British policeman everlastingly in the foreground--_mon Dieu!_ in what clammy, icy bands of unrelieved wretchedness they strangled the exuberance of our boyish hearts upon that dull September Sunday! Besides, I wore my Sunday boots. The man who spoke French, or who, at least, understood some of John's English, left us at Charing Cross, and we went on alone to the joyous dance and revels of Westminster.