The Argosy — page 49: what you’re looking at

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

36 Letters from Majorca. than ten times a week, sometimes oftener. He realises also the truth of Solomon’s wise proverb : “‘ Cast thy bread upon the waters, for thou shalt find it after many days ;” for he tells me that many a time, and years after he has forgotten the incident and the individual, some one comes to him with a blessing and a happy face, and a reformed expression; some one that, perhaps, he had tried to raise from the lowest depths, and who, weeping, declares that, under Heaven, he was their rescuer and upholder. H. C. had never seen Paris, and as we were to leave it early the next morning for Bordeaux, we strolled out after dinner to look at some of its finer features by moonlight. lt had been raining heavily, and Paris in rainy weather is almost as disagreeable as London. Dark clouds rolled across the sky, throwing deep shadows, now obscuring the moon, now allowing it to shine forth with all the brilliancy of a Paris atmosphere. We sauntered through the arcades of the Rue de Rivoli, and on arriving at the other end, the rain was good enough to cease. H. C.’s artistic taste was much exercised by the beauty of the Tour St. Jacques, one of the loveliest Gothic monu- ments in existence. In the strong moonlight it looked wonderfully refined, and we were able to trace much of the ornamentation even of its upper portion. Beyond this we came upon the new Hotel de Ville. Whatever may have been the lost building, destroyed by those terrible Goths and Vandals, the modern one is undoubtedly very imposing. It looked so at least to-night, lighted up by a mixture of gas and electric jets, and the silvery moon sailing in the deep blue sky. Then we crossed over to Notre Dame, and here gazed in silence, that highest form of homage and admiration. We had nothing but moonlight to help us, but all the details stood out distinctly, bringing up the wonderful west front, the delicate flying buttresses of the east end, the great rose windows, with a clearness you would have supposed impossible. Anything more refined and beautiful could not be imagined; and one thought of Ruskin, who raves about it, and of Victor Hugo who made so much of it, and above-all of the brain that designed it and the hands that raised it to perfection. : Beside it flowed the dark Seine, its impenetrable waters gloomy and mysterious under the night sky. With this, thoughts and associa- tions were more melancholy. Not far off was that terrible Morgue ; and all the unhappy victims of the river that have been. carried there would unfold a tale of horror greater than the world could hold. Whilst looking over into the cold flowing waters we were suddenly accosted by a madman, who danced before us in a sort of fine phrenzy, and shouted as we moved away rather abruptly, lest the desire should seize him to hurl us over the parapet. H. C., strong and muscular, might have grappled with such: a foe, but my frail tenement would have as much chance in the grasp of insanity as a pigmy in the hands of a giant, COMMIEOOOKS.E@