At Civita Vecchia to which place he, as usual, walked, he embarked, third class, on a steamboat for Marseilles. The beds were rough planks, the food was drenched like himself, and fleas infested every stitch of covering. It stormed, and Bayard might have perished with exposure to the bad weather, had not a sailor taken compassion on him and his companion, and lent them some clothing. That kindness he ever remembered, and it may have been in his mind when, after meeting many sailors, he wrote of them:— “They do not act with a studied grace, They do not speak in delicate phrase, But the candor of heaven is on their face, And the freedom of ocean in all their ways. They cannot fathom the subtle cheats, The lying arts that the landsmen learn: Each looks in the eyes of the man he meets, And whoso trusts him, he trusts in turn. But whether they die on sea or shore, And lie under water, or sand, or sod, Christ give them the rest that he keeps in store, And anchor their souls in the harbor of God!” He arrived at Marseilles with but five dollars for the expense of a journey of five hundred miles on foot. Dark outlook, indeed, on entering for the first time a country with whose language he was unacquainted. Through rain and mud, sunshine and darkness, he moved on, courageous as ever, and enjoying with the same zest his glimpses of ancient cathedrals and renowned localities. At Lyons he received a small amount of money by mail, and at a time when death by starvation seemed but a few hours removed. The story of his mishaps by land and by water, on his way from Lyons to Paris is a very exciting narration, as he relates them in his “Views Afoot,” and yet shows the best side of a most terrible experience. But Paris was reached at last, and in the first week of February, 1846, they found a lodging place in the Rue de la Harpe, at the rate of two dollars and eighty cents a month. He lived on twenty cents a day, and in place of a teacher of French, subscribed at a circulating library and picked out the words and phrases by downright hard study in his fireless and damp attic. For five weeks he studied and rambled and endured privation, learning Paris by heart and finding himself made free and happy by the atmosphere of gayety which pervades everything there. His favorite resort was the Place de la Concorde, which is an open space at one side of the palace of the Tuileries, and at the foot of that magnificent embowered avenue called the Champs Elysées. There were then, as now, the enchanting groves, with the gardens, concert bowers, and shy booths. There was the obelisk from Luxor, which called Bayard’s attention to Egypt and created a strong desire to see that ancient land of the Nile. There were the solid walls of the Tuileries upon one side, the river Seine upon another, while the twin palaces, with the distant front of the Madeleine Church showing between them, shut out the populous city on the other.