IX 



THE Lilac and Acacia, for instance, were the 

 flower-bearers of the tree-planted playground 

 of that jocund old school where I received the 

 first rudiments of education: the Institution 

 Delescluze, then situate in a kind of backwater 

 of the faubourg St. Honore at the angle facing 

 the Palais de I'Elysee. It has, alas 1 long since 

 been swept away to make room for modern 

 mansions. This ancient Institution, or preparatory 

 school, would seem to have dated from the distant 

 days, early Louis XV probably, when the north 

 side of the then lengthening noble faubourg must 

 still have been occupied by meadows and orchards. 



By the way, it has never occurred to me before to 

 look up that little topographical matter authorita* 

 tively. I do so now. I have here a copy of a wonderful 

 work, the "perspective'" map of Paris as it stood 

 in the 'thirties, of the eighteenth century. It is called 

 the Plan de Turgot, having been surveyed, and 

 engraved, in lavishly decorative style, 

 by order of Louis'le-Bien-Aime, under 

 the care of the celebrated Prevost 

 des Marchands. The book is quite 

 the most fascinating of its kind I know and I 

 think I have handled as goodly a number of 

 such works as any man alive. <The nearest 

 approach to it, in point of what one may 



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