At the sound of this typically Parisian expression (the French word which he employed was _épatant_) proceeding from the royal lips, it was my turn to be "stunned." In my innocence, I was not yet aware that he knew all our smart slang phrases and used them freely. His spirits were as inexhaustible as his bodily activity; and, upon my word, we were hard put to it to keep up with him. Now running from one window to another, so as to "miss nothing," as he said, with a laugh; now leaning over the back of a chair or swinging his legs from a table; now striding up and down the carriage, with his hands in his pockets and the everlasting cigarette between his lips, he questioned us without ceasing. He wanted to know everything, though he knew a great deal as it was. The army and navy excited his interest in the highest degree; the provinces through which we were passing, their customs, their past, their administrative organisation, their industries supplied him with the subjects of an exhaustive interrogatory, to which we did our best to reply. Our social laws, our parliament, our politicians as eagerly aroused his lively curiosity, and then came the turn of Paris which he was at last about to see, whose splendours and peculiarities he already knew from reading and hearsay, that Paris which he looked upon as a fairyland, a promised land; and the thought that he was to be solemnly welcomed there sent a slight flush of excitement to his cheeks. "It must be wonderful!" he said, his eyes ablaze with pleasurable impatience. He also insisted upon our giving him full details about the persons who were to receive him: "What is M. Loubet like? And the prime minister? And the governor of Paris?" When he was not putting questions, he was telling stories, recalling his impressions of his recent journeys in Spain. "Confess, M. Paoli," he said, "that you have never had to look after a king as young as I." His conversation, jesting and serious by turns, studded with judicious reflexions, with smart sallies, with freakish outbursts and unexpected digressions, revealed a young and keen intelligence, eager after knowledge, a fresh mind open to effusive ideas, a quivering imagination, counterbalanced, however, by a reflective brain. I remember the astonishment of the French officers who had come to meet him at the frontier, on hearing him discuss matters of military strategy with the authority and the expert wisdom of an old tactician; I remember also the surprise of a high official who had joined the train midway and to whose explanations the King was lending an attentive ear when we crossed a bridge over the Loire, in which some water-fowl happened to be disporting themselves. "Oh, what a pity!" the King broke in. "Why haven't I a gun?" And, taking aim with an imaginary fowling-piece, "What a fine shot!" Again, I remember the spontaneous and charming way in which, full of admiration for the beauties of our Touraine, he tapped me on the shoulder and cried: