THERE is something about the French nation which, in spite of its dreary¹-looking cities, exhibits an air of metropolitan² up-to-dateness. I don’t know where outside of America you will find the snap and intensity³ of emotion, ambition, and romance which you find everywhere in French streets. The station, when we returned to it, was alive with a crowd of bustling⁴, hurrying people, buying books and papers at news-stands, looking after their luggage in the baggage-room, and chattering⁵ to the ticket-sellers through their windows. A train from Paris was just in and they were hurrying to catch that; and as I made my first French purchase—twenty centimes’ worth of post-cards of Amiens—our train rolled in. It was from the North—such a long train as you frequently see in America, with cars labeled Milan, Trieste, Marseilles, Florence, and Rome. I could hardly believe it, and asked Barfleur as he bustled⁶ about seeing that the luggage was put in the proper carriage, where it came from. He thought that some of these cars started from St. Petersburg and others from Denmark and Holland. They had a long run ahead of them yet—over thirty hours to Rome, and Paris was just one point in their journey. We crowded into one car—stuffy with luggage, its windows damp with human breath, various nationalities occupying the section—and disposed of our grips, portmanteaus, rugs and so on, as best we could. I slipped the bustling old facteur a franc—not so much because he deserved it, but because he had such a gay and212 rakish air. His apron⁷ swung around his legs like a skirt, and his accordion-plaited cap was lolling gaily⁸ over one ear. He waved me a smiling farewell and said something in French which I wished I could understand. Then I realized for the first time what a pity it is not to understand the language of the country in which you are traveling.

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