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The crossing of Canal Street is like being transferred from Broadway to the Boulevards. In their occupations there is a wide difference between the inhabitants of the two quarters. The Americans deal in the strong staples of human life. The great depots of provisions, of cotton, of tobacco, of lumber, and the various sorts of raw produce, will be found among them.
The ménagère hurries down the asphalte to market; a dreadful garçon de café, with a napkin tied round his throat, moves about some chairs, so decrepit and so solitary that it seems impossible to imagine a human being sitting there. Where are the Boulevards? where are the Champs Elysées?
Thus they drove over the Grand Boulevards and recrossed the Harlem River and presently drew up in front of a great apartment house in Park Avenue. The man opened the door. "Walk right in, sir, as though you belong here. The doorman and the elevatorman are prepared." They might be prepared, but Larry certainly was not; and he shot up the elevator to the top floor with mounting bewilderment.
The two friends were delighted with the place, and Anguish advocated a sojourn of several weeks, even though they did not find the Guggenslockers, his object being to secure photographs and sketches of the picturesque people and the strange scenery, and to idle away some hours upon the glittering boulevards.
Once more the carriage moved on rapidly. There was one resource still open to a young man who knew Paris as well as Henri. To know whither he was going, he had but to collect himself and count, by the number of gutters crossed, the streets leading from the boulevards by which the carriage passed, so long as it continued straight along.
'Went out again up the Boulevards. The house of the Minister of Foreign Affairs was filled with people and "HOTEL DU PEUPLE" written on it; the Boulevards were barricaded with fine old trees that were cut down and stretched all across the road. We went through a great many little streets, all strongly barricaded, and sentinels of the people at the principal of them.
Without questioning his meaning, or sounding his plan, or offering the semblance of an objection, I re-tied my bonnet: I was ready. The route he took was by the boulevards: he several times made me sit down on the seats stationed under the lime-trees; he did not ask if I was tired, but looked, and drew his own conclusions.
I was in my own apartment, all alone, and I was convinced that if I gave in to my feelings I should have a terrible attack of melancholia, one of those attacks that lead to suicide when they recur too often. I put on my overcoat and went out without the slightest idea of what I was going to do. Having gone as far as the boulevards, I began to wander along by the almost empty cafes.
Now Marguerite's mysterious flight was leaving him entirely alone, in a solitude that was filling him with remorse. That afternoon, when strolling through the boulevards, he had stumbled across a friend considerably older than himself, an acquaintance in the fencing club which he used to frequent.
To recapitulate all the curious manoeuvres which are constantly going forward on the Boulevards would swell a volume, we will therefore pass on to the more retired parts, where the fine vistas of high trees have been spared the havoc of the Three Days; these once extended throughout the whole course of the Boulevards, but so many trees were cut down to form barricades, that those beautiful arches formed by rows of lofty elms, which were merely trained on the inner side, the outer being suffered to grow in the wild luxuriance of nature, are only now to be met with "few and far between."
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