on about the field.  By and by there was a sound of music, and soon the Emperor of the French and the Emperor of Austria, escorted by the famous Cent Gardes, entered the enclosure.  They seemed not to observe him, but directly, in response to a sign from the commander of the guard, a young lieutenant came toward him with a file of his men following, halted, raised his hand, and gave the military salute, and then said in a low voice that he was sorry to have to disturb a stranger and a gentleman, but the place was sacred to royalty.  Then this New Jersey phantom rose up and bowed and begged pardon, then with the officer beside him, the file of men marching behind him, and with every mark of respect, he was escorted to his carriage by the imperial Cent Gardes!  The officer saluted again and fell back, the New Jersey sprite bowed in return and had presence of mind enough to pretend that he had simply called on a matter of private business with those emperors, and so waved them an adieu and drove from the field!

Imagine a poor Frenchman ignorantly intruding upon a public rostrum sacred to some six-penny dignitary in America.  The police would scare him to death first with a storm of their elegant blasphemy, and then pull him to pieces getting him away from there.  We are measurably superior to the French in some things, but they are immeasurably our betters in others.

Enough of Paris for the present.  We have done our whole duty by it.  We have seen the Tuileries, the Napoleon Column, the Madeleine, that wonder of wonders the tomb of Napoleon, all the great churches and museums, libraries, imperial palaces, and sculpture and picture galleries, the Pantheon, Jardin des Plantes, the opera, the circus, the legislative body, the billiard rooms, the barbers, the grisettes—­

Ah, the grisettes!  I had almost forgotten.  They are another romantic fraud.  They were (if you let the books of travel tell it) always so beautiful—­so neat and trim, so graceful—­so naive and trusting—­so gentle, so winning—­so faithful to their shop duties, so irresistible to buyers in their prattling importunity—­so devoted to their poverty-stricken students of the Latin Quarter—­so lighthearted and happy on their Sunday picnics in the suburbs—­and oh, so charmingly, so delightfully immoral!

Stuff!  For three or four days I was constantly saying: 

“Quick, Ferguson!  Is that a grisette?”

And he always said, “No.”

He comprehended at last that I wanted to see a grisette.  Then he showed me dozens of them.  They were like nearly all the Frenchwomen I ever saw —­homely.  They had large hands, large feet, large mouths; they had pug noses as a general thing, and moustaches that not even good breeding could overlook; they combed their hair straight back without parting; they were ill-shaped, they were not winning, they were not graceful; I knew by their looks that they ate garlic and onions; and lastly and finally, to my thinking it would be base flattery to call them immoral.