It is
Sunday, let us say--and for all I know a great race may be going on--all
Paris is there, rich and poor. Little red-legged soldiers, big
blue-legged gendarmes, keep the course clear; the sun shines, the
tricolour waves, the gay, familiar language makes the summer breeze
musical. I dare say it is all very bright and animated, but the whole
place rings with the vulgar din of the bookmakers, and the air is full
of dust and foul with the scent of rank tobacco, the reek of struggling
French humanity; and the gaunt Eiffel Tower looks down upon it all from
the sky over Paris (so, at least, I am told) like a skeleton at a feast.
Then twilight comes, and the crowds have departed; on foot, on
horseback, on bicycles and tricycles, in every kind of vehicle; many by
the _chemin de fer de ceinture_, the Auteuil station of which is close
by ... all is quiet and bare and dull.
Then down drops the silent night like a curtain, and beneath its
friendly cover the strange transformation effects itself quickly, and
all is made ready for _me_. The grand-stand evaporates, the railway
station melts away into thin air; there is no more Eiffel Tower with its
electric light! The sweet forest of fifty years ago rises suddenly out
of the ground, and all the wild live things that once lived in it wake
to their merry life again.
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