QUARTIER LATINITIES (III) 



Jostle your way as rapidly as may be out of the 

 Rue Vavin, cross the Rue d'Assas, and pass tln-ough 

 the httlc corner gate into the Luxembourg Gardens. 

 What a breath of young grass and hawthorn in blossom 

 to replace the oniony whiff of the third-rate restaurant, 

 the pent staleness of the narrow street ! This is the 

 freshest and most pastoral corner of the gardens, 

 where large trees lean down to touch the gi'ass, 

 unvexed by lopping or strict relation to their neigh- 

 bours, where a hamlet of beehives has a grove to 

 itself, and there are no flower-beds. But it is not 

 popular; only the sourest of the bonnes, the most 

 select of the children, the moodiest of the idlers, 

 take their pleasure here among the horse-chestnuts 

 and copper beeches; even the dogs know it to be a 

 mere health resort, and mope obediently along upon 

 their leashes with a demeanour shorn of gallantry. 

 It is at the other side of the gardens, where prim alleys 

 of young trees spring geometrically from acres of 

 gravel, and the merry-go-round circles everlastingly 

 to a muffled internal tune, that the world of fashion 

 is to be found. There are many seats among the thin 

 tree-stems, and each groans beneath its load of nurses, 

 babies, and underlings of the nurse; family parties 

 sit in circles on hired chairs, conversing with amazing 

 zest round perambulators, both double and single; 

 little girls ply their skipping-ropes like clockwork. 

 Here it is that French domestic life, long maligned, 

 shows itself in colours as gratifying as unexpected, 



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