Well I knew and loved it all; and most of all I loved it when the sun
was setting at my back, and innumerable distant windows reflected the
blood-red western flame. It seemed as though half Paris were on fire,
with the cold blue east for a background.
Dear Paris!
Yes, it is something to have roamed over it as a small boy--a small
English boy (that is, a small boy unattended by his mother or his
nurse), curious, inquisitive, and indefatigable; full of imagination;
all his senses keen with the keenness that belongs to the morning of
life: the sight of a hawk, the hearing of a bat, almost the scent of
a hound.
Indeed, it required a nose both subtle and unprejudiced to understand
and appreciate and thoroughly enjoy that Paris--not the Paris of M. le
Baron Haussmann, lighted by gas and electricity, and flushed and drained
by modern science; but the "good old Paris" of Balzac and Eugene Sue and
_Les Mysteres_--the Paris of dim oil-lanterns suspended from iron
gibbets (where once aristocrats had been hung); of water-carriers who
sold water from their hand-carts, and delivered it at your door (_au
cinqueme_) for a penny a pail--to drink of, and wash in, and cook
with, and all.
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