Come back with me now into the very heart of Paris, and let us stroll within the area of the Palais Royal.  You may remember that I spoke of a fountain, which played within the centre of this popular resort.  The different branches, or jets d’eau, spring from a low, central point; and crossing each other in a variety of angles, and in the most pleasing manner of intersection, produce, altogether, the appearance of the blossom of a large flower:  so silvery and transparent is the water, and so gracefully are its glassy petals disposed.  Meanwhile, the rays of the sun, streaming down from above, produce a sort of stationary rainbow:  and, in the heat of the day, as you sit upon the chairs, or saunter beneath the trees, the effect is both grateful and refreshing.  The little flower garden, in the centre of which this fountain seems to be for ever playing, is a perfect model of neatness and tasteful disposition:  not a weed dare intrude:  and the earth seems always fresh and moist from the spray of the fountain—­ while roses, jonquils, and hyacinths scatter their delicious fragrance around.  For one minute only let us visit the Caffe des Mille Colonnes:  so called (as you well know) from the number of upright mirrors and glasses which reflect the small columns by which the ceiling is supported.  Brilliant and singular as is this effect, it is almost eclipsed by the appearance of the Mistress of the House; who, decorated with rich and rare gems, and seated upon a sort of elevated throne—­uniting great comeliness and (as some think) beauty of person—­receives both the homage and (what is doubtless preferable to her) the francs of numerous customers and admirers.  The “wealth of either Ind” sparkles upon her hand, or glitters upon her attire:  and if the sun of her beauty be somewhat verging towards its declension, it sets with a glow which reminds her old acquaintance of the splendour of its noon-day power.  It is yet a sharply contested point whether the ice of this house be preferable to that of Tortoni:  a point, too intricate and momentous for my solution.  “Non nostrum est ... tantas componere lites.”

Of the Jardin des Plantes, which I have once visited, but am not likely to revisit—­owing to the extreme heat of the weather, and the distance of the spot from this place—­scarcely too much can be said in commendation:  whether we consider it as a depot for live or dead animals, or as a school of study and instruction for the cultivators of natural history.  The wild animals are kept, in their respective cages, out of doors, which is equally salutary for themselves and agreeable to their visitors.  I was much struck by the perpetual motion of a huge, restless, black bear, who has left the marks of his footsteps by a concavity in the floor:—­as well as by the panting, and apparently painful, inaction of an equally huge white or gray bear—­who, nurtured upon beds of Greenland ice, seemed to be dying