The day you go to Notre Dame, cross the Pont d'Arcole, and that brings you right into the gardens of the Hôtel de Ville, which is beyond doubt the most magnificent palace of justice in the world. Its decorations rival those of the Louvre. The entrance, the galleries, the ballroom and the banquet hall are splendid beyond description. The ceiling decorations are all by noted artists, and represent some type of Plenty, Music, or Love. It is marvelous, the art these French have put into their architecture.
The crowning delight, that of a visit to the tomb of Napoleon, awaits your week's end. The tomb is in the crypt under the Dome des Invalides, a home for old soldiers, and is reached by walking through the gardens and long, cloister-like passages of the Invalides. As I entered, my eyes fell on an immense altar, through the amber window of which a flood of golden light poured on a colossal cross, lighting the face of the bronze figure of Christ nailed to it, making a most dramatic picture. This figure was cast from one of Napoleon's cannons.
The tomb itself is a large marble basin, over the edge of which you look down onto the sarcophagus cut out of a huge block of reddish-brown granite. It stands on a mosaic pavement, in the form of a laurel wreath, and around the walls are twelve colossal statues representing the twelve victories.
"I wish I had been born either rich or a hod-carrier!" The very idea of a woman of my parts counting centimes! Instead of telling my friends how to come on the least money, I'd rather say, Wait—until you have millions to buy the dainty confections with which Paris abounds. It gives me heartaches "to look and smile and reach for, then stop and sigh and count the aforesaid centimes." From this you have, perhaps, surmised that we have been going over the pros and cons of shopping—principally the cons.
How foolish of me to tell any one not to come to dear, mad, wild, glorious Paris! Why, I'd come, if only to remain a day, and though I had nothing to eat for a year thereafter.
Last night when I wrote, I was "way back at the end of the procession," but this morning I am "right up behind the band." And the reason? Never ask a woman sojourning on foreign shores for a motif. There is but one that, far from those she loves, makes or mars the pleasure of being, brings the sunshine or the cloud, regulates the pulse-beats of her very existence, and that is—A LETTER!
I have not told you. For some days I have had no word, hence my lowly position of yesterday. But on this bright, beautiful morning I found on my breakfast tray a packet of many-stamped, much-crossed and often-forwarded letters. And now, although it is raining in torrents, and the coffee is—not coffee,—I can see only golden words, and those through rose-tinted glasses.