Part 24 (1/2)
He looked wan and wizened Yet there were still several years before him When he cah I did not see him--he was too ill to see any one--but Frank Mason kept me advised fro reached home, the news came to us that he was dead ere nowise surprised, and alht that rest had come at last
Frank Mason and his wife--”the Masons,” they were commonly called, for Mrs Mason made a wondrous second to her husband--were froe Birchard--Jennie Birchard--he a rising young journalist caught in the late seventies by the glitter of a foreign appoint with Basel and Marseilles and ending with Frankfurt, Berlin and Paris Wherever they were their house was a very ho Americans and eneral--in point of fact when he was plain consul at Marseilles--he ran over to Paris for a lark One day he said to me, ”A rich old hayseed uncle of mine has come to town He has ed for us to dine with hiht and we are to order the dinner--carte blanche” The rich old uncle to whom I was presented did not have the appearance of a hayseed On the contrary he was a entle”--especially the wines When the bill was presented our host scanned it carefully, scrutinizing each itehbred” Frank and I watched him not without a bit of anxiety mixed with contrition When he had paid the score he said with a smile: ”That was rather a steep bill, but we have had rather a good dinner, and now, if you boys know of as good a dance hall we'll go there and I'll buy the outfit”
II
First and last I have lived ayest when the Duke de Morny flourished as King of the Bourse
He was reputed the Emperor's natural half-brother The breakdown of the Mexican adventure, which was mostly his, contributed not a little to the final Napoleonic fall He died of dissipation and disappointment, and under the pseudonym of the Duke de Morra, Daudet celebrated him in ”The Nabob”
De Morny did not live to see the tumble of the house of cards he had built Next after I saw Paris it was a pitiful wreck indeed; the Hotel de Ville and the Tuileries in flaone from the Place Vendome; but later the rise of the Third Republic saw the revival of the unquenchable spirit of the irrepressible French
Nevertheless I should scarcely be taken for a Parisian Once, andering aih the Paris streets, one of the touts hanging round the Cafe de la Paix to catch the unwary stranger being a little o about his business
”This is my business,” he impudently answered
”Get away, I tell you!” I thundered, ”I am a Parisian myself!”
He drew a little out of reach of the umbrella I held in my hand, and with a drawl of supreme and very American contempt, exclaimed, ”Well, you don't look it,” and scampered off
Paris, however, is not all of France Soht not the best part of it There is the south of France, with Avignon, the heart of Provence, seat of the French papacy six hundred years ago, the ion--Paris yet a village, and Roes--with Arles and Nimes, and, above all, Tarascon, the hohbors They are all hard by Marseilles But Avignon ever hts seehosts of warriors and cardinals, and there on festal s the spirits of Petrarch and his Laura walk abroad, the ramparts, which bade defiance to Goth and Vandal and Saracen hordes, now giving shelter to bats and owls, but the at of Flora and the country green, Dance and Provencal song and sun-burnttoo much of this! Let me not yield to the spell of the picturesque To recur to et down to prose and the times we live in let us halt a moment on this southerly journey and have a look in upon Lyons, the industrial capital of France, which is directly on the way
The idiosyncrasy of Lyons is silk There are two schools of introduction in the art of silk weaving, one of the a trifle of matriculation The first of these witnesses the whole process of fabrication frooods, and the loo of course, the painstaking itswith his fa the cost of the barest necessities of life Again, and ever and ever again, the inequalities of fortune! Where will it end?
The world has tried revolution and it has tried anarchy Always the survival of the strong, nicknamed by Spencer and his ilk the ”fittest”
Ten thousand heads were chopped off during the Terror in France to h it must be allowed that in some ways the conditions were improved
Yet here after a hundred years, here in Lyons, faithful, intelligent le for sixty, for forty cents a day, with never a hope beyond!
What is to be done about it? Suppose the wealth of the universe were divided per capita, how long would it remain out of the clutches of the Napoleons of finance, only a percentage of whom find ultimately their Waterloo, little to the profit of the poor who spin and delve, who fight and die, in the Grand Army of the Wretched!
III
We read a deal that is aeneris_ Soo there appeared in Louisville a dapper gentleman, who declared himself a Marseillais, and who subsequently came to be known variously as The Major and The Frenchman I shall not mention hih the city directory of Marseilles I found an entire page devoted to his nah all the entries may not have been members of his family There is no doubt that he was a Marseillais
Wandering through the streets of the old city, now in a cafe of La Cannebiere and now along a quay of the Old Port, his ghost has often crossed rave this rew to know him very well, to be first amused by him, then to be interested, and in the end to entertain an affection for hihtful coadier Gerard, with a dash of the Count of Monte Cristo; for when he was flush--which by some odd coincidence happened exactly four times a year--he was as liberal a spendthrift as one could wish to meet anywhere between the little principality of Monaco and the headwaters of the Nile; transparent as a child; idiosyncratic to a degree
I understand Marseilles better and it has always seemed nearer to me since he was born there and lived there when a boy, and, I race of excellent and wealthy people; not, I feel sure, for any offense that touched the essential parts of his ht and harmless creature I never knew in all my life
I very well recall when he first arrived in the Kentucky metropolis
His attire and raiment were faultless He wore a rose in his coat, he carried a delicate cane, and aupon his arm