My father had been on very friendly terms with Napoleon III., then Prince Louis Napoleon, during the period of his exile in London in 1838, when he lived in King Street, St. James’.  Prince Louis Napoleon acted as my father’s “Esquire” at the famous Eglinton Tournament in August, 1839.  The tournament, over which such a vast amount of trouble and expense had been lavished, was ruined by an incessant downpour of rain, which lasted four days.  My father gave me as a boy the “Challenge Shield” with coat of arms, which hung outside his tent at the tournament, and that shield has always accompanied me in my wanderings.  It hangs within a few feet of me as I write, as it hung forty-three years ago in my room in Berlin, and later in Petrograd, Lisbon, and Buenos Ayres.

One of the great sights of Paris in the “sixties,” whilst it was still gas-lighted, was the “cordon de lumiere de la Rue de Rivoli.”  As every one knows, the Rue de Rivoli is nearly two miles long, and runs perfectly straight, being arcaded throughout its length.  In every arch of the arcades there hung then a gas lamp.  At night the continuous ribbon of flame from these lamps, stretching in endless vista down the street, was a fascinatingly beautiful sight.  Every French provincial who visited Paris was expected to admire the “cordon de lumiere de la Rue de Rivoli.”  Now that electricity has replaced gas, I fancy that the lamps are placed further apart, and so the effect of a continuous quivering band of yellow flame is lost.  Equally every French provincial had to admire the “luxe de gaz” of the Place de la Concorde.  It certainly blazed with gas, but now with electric arc-lamps there is double the light with less than a tenth of the number of old flickering gas-lamps; another example of quality vs. quantity.

Most of my father and mother’s French friends lived in the Faubourg Saint Germain.  Their houses, though no doubt very fine for entertaining, were dark and gloomy in the daytime.  Our little friends of my own age seemed all to inhabit dim rooms looking into courtyards, where, however, we were bidden to unbelievably succulent repasts, very different to the plain fare to which we were accustomed at home.  Both my brother and myself were, I think, unconscious as to whether we were speaking English or French; we could express ourselves with equal facility in either language.  When I first went to school, I could speak French as well as English, and it is a wonderful tribute to the efficient methods of teaching foreign languages practised in our English schools, that at the end of nine years of French lessons, both at a preparatory school and at Harrow, I had not forgotten much more than seventy-five per cent. of the French I knew when I went there.  In the same way, after learning German at Harrow for two-and-a-half years, my linguistic attainments in that language were limited to two words, ja and nein.  It is true that, for some mysterious reason, German was taught us at Harrow by a Frenchman who had merely a bowing acquaintanceship with the tongue.