gathered beneath all the lime-trees, and buxom, white-capped nurses, seated along the benches, were offering to their infant charges the amplest facilities for nutrition. There was an easy, homely gaiety in the whole scene, and Christopher Newman felt that it was most characteristically Parisian. 

 “And now,” began Mr. Tristram, when they had tested the decoction which he had caused to be served to them, “now just give an account of yourself. What are your ideas, what are your plans, where have you come from and where are you going? In the first place, where are you staying?” 

 “At the Grand Hotel,” said Newman. 

 Mr. Tristram puckered his plump visage. “That won’t do! You must change.” 

 “Change?” demanded Newman. “Why, it’s the finest hotel I ever was in.” 

 “You don’t want a ‘fine’ hotel; you want something small and quiet and elegant, where your bell is answered and you—your person is recognized.” 

 “They keep running to see if I have rung before I have touched the bell,” said Newman “and as for my person they are always bowing and scraping to it.” 

 “I suppose you are always tipping them. That’s very bad style.” 

 “Always? By no means. A man brought me something yesterday, and then stood loafing in a beggarly manner. I offered him a chair and asked him if he wouldn’t sit down. Was that bad style?” 

 “Very!” 

 “But he bolted, instantly. At any rate, the place amuses me. Hang your elegance, if it bores me. I sat in the court of the Grand Hotel last night until two o’clock in the morning, watching the coming and going, and the people knocking about.” 

 “You’re easily pleased. But you can do as you choose—a man in your shoes. You have made a pile of money, eh?” 

 “I have made enough.” 

 “Happy the man who can say that? Enough for what?” 

 “Enough to rest awhile, to forget the confounded thing, to look about me, to see the world, to have a good time, to improve my mind, and, if the fancy takes me, to marry a wife.” Newman spoke slowly, with a certain dryness of accent and with frequent pauses. This was his habitual mode of utterance, but it was especially marked in the words I have just quoted. 

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