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He asked me questions that showed he knew all about these things, mentioned names, all the familiar names in vaudeville known on the sidewalks. "Whom does one see at Tortoni's now? "Always the same crowd, except those who died." I looked at him attentively, haunted by a vague recollection. I certainly had seen that head somewhere. But where? And when?
Crowds of stay-at-homes, throngs of women and children lined the sidewalks, shouting deliriously, and waving handkerchiefs, inspired by the marching soldiers, with guns on their shoulders, and the strains of martial music, varied with the then popular "The girl I left behind me," or, "When this cruel war is over." But this is quite different.
Wherever you find a town you can find lunch counters and theaters with galleries from which you can learn the drama at a quarter a throw, and street cars that can be tampered with, and wooden sidewalks that burn well on celebration nights, and nice girls who began being nice four college generations ago and never forgot how.
When I state that in all these narrow streets which constitute the greater part of the city, there are no sidewalks, the windows of the lower stories with an iron grating extending a foot or so into the street, which is only wide enough for one cart to pass along, you can have some idea of the facility of walking through them, to say nothing of the piles of wood, and market-women with baskets of vegetables which one is continually stumbling over.
In the outer suburbs of the very largest cities I saw revulsions against the wholesale barracky conveniences of the apartment-house, in the shape of little colonies of homes, consciously but superficially imitating the Cambridge-Indianapolis tradition with streets far more curvily winding than the streets of Cambridge, and sidewalks of a strip of concrete between green turf-bands that recalled the original sidewalks of Indianapolis and even of the rural communities around Indianapolis.
I will not stoop to boast of the part I have taken in the prosperity of this place; but I will say that no public object has been wanting that my support has not been wanting from the first proposition to concrete the sidewalks of this village to the introduction of city waterworks and an improved system of drainage, and er electric lighting. So much for my standing in a public capacity!
Beyond the Madeleine the roadway of the boulevard was entirely empty, kept clear by two lines of soldiers, who forced the spectators back to the sidewalks, black with people; all the stores closed, and the balconies, despite the rain, overflowing with bodies leaning far forward in the direction of the church, as if to watch the passage of a herd of fat cattle, or the return of victorious troops.
It was unobtrusive, yet it was there. He decided, from the way she carried it, that she deemed her body a thing to be proud of, to be cared for as a beautiful and valued possession. In this, and in the way she carried her clothes, he compared her with her assistant, with the stenographers he encountered in other offices, with the women he saw on the sidewalks.
"He might fool you fellows yet," said the one caller, though his tone was not one of conviction. "I understand he had a first-rate record an the Mexican War." Just then an aide rode up, and the Colonel gave a sharp command which put an end to this desultory talk. As the First Regiment took up the march, the words "Camp Jackson" ran from mouth to mouth on the sidewalks.
The sidewalks gleamed, the Boulevard was deserted, the night was sinister. On arriving, they found that the painter's door was open, and that the concierge's lodge was lighted but empty. At the top of the stairs the physician, Dr. de Rivil, a little gray man, short, round, very well dressed, extremely polite, came to meet them. He bowed low to the Countess and held out his hand to the Count.
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