“Oh, no you wouldn’t!” said Mr. Tristram.  “You think so, but you wouldn’t.  You wouldn’t have had time.  You would always mean to go, but you never would go.  There’s better fun than that, here in Paris.  Italy’s the place to see pictures; wait till you get there.  There you have to go; you can’t do anything else.  It’s an awful country; you can’t get a decent cigar.  I don’t know why I went in there, to-day; I was strolling along, rather hard up for amusement.  I sort of noticed the Louvre as I passed, and I thought I would go in and see what was going on.  But if I hadn’t found you there I should have felt rather sold.  Hang it, I don’t care for pictures; I prefer the reality!” And Mr. Tristram tossed off this happy formula with an assurance which the numerous class of persons suffering from an overdose of “culture” might have envied him.

The two gentlemen proceeded along the Rue de Rivoli and into the Palais Royal, where they seated themselves at one of the little tables stationed at the door of the cafe which projects into the great open quadrangle.  The place was filled with people, the fountains were spouting, a band was playing, clusters of chairs were gathered beneath all the lime-trees, and buxom, white-capped nurses, seated along the benches, were offering to their infant charges the amplest facilities for nutrition.  There was an easy, homely gayety in the whole scene, and Christopher Newman felt that it was most characteristically Parisian.

“And now,” began Mr. Tristram, when they had tested the decoction which he had caused to be served to them, “now just give an account of yourself.  What are your ideas, what are your plans, where have you come from and where are you going?  In the first place, where are you staying?”

“At the Grand Hotel,” said Newman.

Mr. Tristram puckered his plump visage.  “That won’t do!  You must change.”

“Change?” demanded Newman.  “Why, it’s the finest hotel I ever was in.”

“You don’t want a ‘fine’ hotel; you want something small and quiet and elegant, where your bell is answered and you—­your person is recognized.”

“They keep running to see if I have rung before I have touched the bell,” said Newman “and as for my person they are always bowing and scraping to it.”

“I suppose you are always tipping them.  That’s very bad style.”

“Always?  By no means.  A man brought me something yesterday, and then stood loafing in a beggarly manner.  I offered him a chair and asked him if he wouldn’t sit down.  Was that bad style?”

“Very!”

“But he bolted, instantly.  At any rate, the place amuses me.  Hang your elegance, if it bores me.  I sat in the court of the Grand Hotel last night until two o’clock in the morning, watching the coming and going, and the people knocking about.”

“You’re easily pleased.  But you can do as you choose—­a man in your shoes.  You have made a pile of money, eh?”