Chapter V (3)

To take a final survey, let us enter the Café de la Paix, the most imperial, cosmopolitan and stylish of cafés. That well-preserved man sitting by himself is playing _solitaire_--a group of one. That white-haired old gentleman sitting in the alcove yonder is drinking sweetened water--surely not a beverage calculated to pollute the palate. Those round-headed men, whose bald pates are fringed with gray, are now settling up their score. It is only a franc or two, but each one pays his share, "treating" not being common. You are often asked to drink, and left to pay for what you drink--an arrangement greatly to be preferred, provided it be understood. That stylish-looking man reading the _Figaro_ is drinking a green chartreuse, and every time he stoops to sip from the little goblet that stands before him, his huge moustache, folding over it, looks like two great black wings. That pale-faced man is probably a professor. He has just sweetened his coffee, and is now pocketing the lumps of sugar remaining over in the little dish (considered a perfectly proper thing to do); and that stripling from the province, he is taking account of everything--the velvet, marble, silver, glass, the flowers, vases, pictured panels, the waiters in their white aprons, the water-bottles in which the ice is frozen by artificial process, the crinkle-crankle, gilding, glare, the plants in the doorway and the queen behind her box.

Looking out upon the sidewalk, all the world is passing by--Guadeloupe negroes with white servants at their heels; artillerymen with dangling sabres; cocottes, Englishmen, zouaves; washerwomen and their daughters carrying skirts suspended from the tops of poles; old men with goggles and young men with canes and great show of cuffs; multitudes of distinguished-looking people, _Français à l'outrance_; people with beaked noses and olive complexions; clerks and shop-girls, _gamins_ and _bonnes_; policemen of inferior stature, who though armed with swords, look incapable of dealing with desperate men; laborers in blouses and old ladies in caps.

Sitting once in front of the Café de la Paix at five o'clock in the afternoon, and looking through a line of promenaders such as that, I counted two hundred 'busses, private carriages and hacks, most (or many at least) of whose occupants were presumably bent on pleasure, to sixteen carts and other vehicles devoted exclusively to business--eight of which, by the way, were hand-carts. Oh the gay and happy town! I thought. Where the turn-outs bear such a proportion to the drays, no wonder cafés thrive, exquisite drinks are served, and a _corky_ people, who have a happy faculty, as illustrated by the late war, of coming up the quicker the farther they are pressed down, find the thing enjoyable.

A café-front indeed is better than an omnibus-top for studying Paris, and the café itself is a club for everybody. People go to it to gossip and regale themselves, play games, talk politics, read the newspapers, write letters, transact business it may be, sit, think, dream, and rest themselves. To the Anglo-Saxon the life that is led in it seems a good deal like walking about in a botanical garden during the day and sleeping in an observatory at night--a decidedly artificial existence; but so long as we must drink or be amused at all, we shall do well to study the ways of the French. They alone know how to eat and drink properly and amuse themselves in a rational way.

GILMAN C. FISHER.

FOG.

Light silken curtain, colorless and soft,
Dreamlike before me floating! what abides
Behind thy pearly veil's
Opaque, mysterious woof?

Where sleek red kine, and dappled, crunch day-long
Thick, luscious blades and purple clover-heads,
Nigh me I still can mark
Cool fields of beaded grass.

No more; for on the rim of the globed world
I seem to stand and stare at nothingness.
But songs of unseen birds
And tranquil roll of waves

Bring sweet assurance of continuous life
Beyond this silvery cloud. Fantastic dreams,
Of tissue subtler still
Than the wreathed fog, arise,

And cheat my brain with airy vanishings
And mystic glories of the world beyond.
A whole enchanted town
Thy baffling folds conceal--

An Orient town, with slender-steepled mosques,
Turret from turret springing, dome from dome,
Fretted with burning stones,
And trellised with red gold.

Through spacious streets, where running waters flow,
Sun-screened by fruit trees and the broad-leaved palm,
Past the gay-decked bazaars,
Walk turbaned, dark-eyed men.

Hark! you can hear the many murmuring tongues,
While loud the merchants vaunt their gorgeous wares.
The sultry air is spiced
With fragrance of rich gums,

And through the lattice high in yon dead wall,
See where, unveiled, an arch, young, dimpled face,
Flushed like a musky peach,
Peers down upon the mart!

From her dark, ringleted and bird-poised head
She hath cast back the milk-white silken veil:
'Midst the blank blackness there
She blossoms like a rose.

Beckons she not with those bright, full-orbed eyes,
And open arms that like twin moonbeams gleam?
Behold her smile on me
With honeyed, scarlet lips!

Divine Scheherazade! I am thine.
I come! I come!--Hark! from some far-off mosque
The shrill muezzin calls
The hour of silent prayer,

And from the lattice he hath scared my love.
The lattice vanisheth itself--the street,
The mart, the Orient town;
Only through still, soft air

That cry is yet prolonged. I wake to hear
The distant fog-horn peal: before mine eyes
Stands the white wall of mist,
Blending with vaporous skies.

Elusive gossamer, impervious
Even to the mighty sun-god's keen red shafts!
With what a jealous art
Thy secret thou dost guard!

Well do I know deep in thine inmost folds,
Within an opal hollow, there abides
The lady of the mist,
The Undine of the air--

A slender, winged, ethereal, lily form,
Dove-eyed, with fair, free-floating, pearl-wreathed hair,
In waving raiment swathed
Of changing, irised hues.

Where her feet, rosy as a shell, have grazed
The freshened grass, a richer emerald glows:
Into each flower-cup
Her cool dews she distils.

She knows the tops of jagged mountain-peaks,
She knows the green soft hollows of their sides,
And unafraid she floats
O'er the vast-circled seas.

She loves to bask within the moon's wan beams,
Lying, night-long, upon the moist, dark earth,
And leave her seeded pearls
With morning on the grass.

Ah! that athwart these dim, gray outer courts
Of her fantastic palace I might pass,
And reach the inmost shrine
Of her chaste solitude,

And feel her cool and dewy fingers press
My mortal-fevered brow, while in my heart
She poured with tender love
Her healing Lethe-balm!

See! the close curtain moves, the spell dissolves!
Slowly it lifts: the dazzling sunshine streams
Upon a newborn world
And laughing summer seas.

Swift, snowy-breasted sandbirds twittering glance
Through crystal air. On the horizon's marge,
Like a huge purple wraith,
The dusky fog retreats.

EMMA LAZARUS.

THE MARQUIS OF LOSSIE.

BY GEORGE MACDONALD, AUTHOR OF "MALCOLM."