Pickwick Abroad: or, The Tour in France — page 257: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

208 Pickwick Abroad. voice that was frequently interrupted by loud sobs which she in vain endeavoured to suffocate, Emilie D’Arly hastened out of the room, leaving me in a state of mind not easily conceived. Some minutes elapsed before I thought of retiring from the apartment; then, col- lecting my scattered ideas and remembering the business I had in view, I hastily returned to my lodgings. And then there arose in my mind a confusion of ideas, that gradually formed themselves into a distinct comparison between the afflicted wife I had just left, and the © remorseless husband I was endeavouring to save from ruin :—the one so pure and spotiess—the other so tainted and criminal; the one affectionate and forgiving—the other neglectful and unkind; the one belonging to a celestial sphere—the other attached to the grossest pleasures of life; the one whom you could fall down and worship— the other whose friendship you would scorn; the one chaste and vir- tuous—the other impure and vicious; the one, in fine, all that is beautiful and divine—and the other all that is dissipated and licentious. But to proceed. At about nine o’clock I repaired to the Palais- Royal. It was in the month of June—the gay—the laughing—the smiling month of June—when the gay resorts of the fashionable world of Paris are the most frequented—when the cafés are crowded with elegantly dressed people—when ices, lemonade, and orange-flower water are discussed with peculiar god¢—when the Champs Elysees re-echo to the music of Franconi, or of the various surrounding guingettes—when the fume of the cigar mingles with the fragrance of sweet flowers—when every heart is light, and when nature itself 18 radiant with joy. At that season of the year how delicious a resort is the Palais Royal! That magnificent monument, raised by one of the greatest princes that ever swayed the sceptre of France, is wntgue and unequalled by aught in the cities of other nations, and may alone enable Paris to assert her superiority as a metropolis over every other in the world. The lofty colonnades—the splendid shops—the inviting display of luxuries in the windows of the ca/és—afford a spectacle at once imposing and luxurious. I was about to ascend the narrow staircase which I had mounted in the morning, and which, as the courteous reader will please to recol- lect, led to a suite of apartments in which the gambler might gratify Pigized bY mal oOks. CO