“How beautiful she is!” Phil thought, as he looked at her faultless features and her eyes, in which a flame seemed burning.
“How handsome you are!” Helia said to him, scanning his firm expression and look of frankness.
They talked of one thing and another, thinking of each other all the while; or else they remained without speaking, he on his throne, she at his feet, their gaze lost in the tumultuous, motionless ocean of houses.
Paris was around them with its muffled murmur. At the height where they were, a pigeon’s cooing subdued the noise of three million human beings; at their feet carriages filled the streets, moving on ceaselessly, like a silent river. Helia looked to the horizon before her. First of all she descried, among the trees of the Quai de Conti, on the other side of the Seine, Phil’s little window. That was her first halting-place. La Monnaie (the Mint), with all its millions on one side, and the Institut (the palace of the Academy), with its Immortals, on the other, interested her less. For her they were simply side-pieces, setting Phil’s attic in relief. Just behind, over an immensity of roofs, the Palais du Luxembourg served as a background. Farther still, to right and left and everywhere, even in the distant blue, could be seen cupolas and spires, towers and domes. The church of the Sacré-Cœur rose above this ocean like a cliff at whose foot the smoke beat up like waves.
“How beautiful it is! Oh, Phil, is it not beautiful? And how happy I am!” said Helia.
In those first days the strangeness of the place intimidated her; even the busts took from the privacy of the spot. But she soon came to look on them as old friends, treating them as equals, as sovereign to sovereign. When Phil was painting and herself posing for him, she would tranquilly disembarrass herself of her collar and place it on the shoulders of Napoleon III and crown the blessed head of Louis-Philippe with her flowery hat. She sat on the old throne, and presided without ceremony over the assembled monarchs.
The little garden seemed immense to her, for it held their happiness. In reality, it occupied only one angle of the middle pediment above the colonnade which looks toward Saint-Germain l’Auxerrois.
From that corner, flat as a Russian steppe, stretched the immense oblong of the zinc roofs which surround the court of the Louvre, forming a desert six hundred yards long by thirty wide. Farther on, pointed roofs and pavillons and deep gutters invited to adventure, and they amused themselves in exploring their domain.
Especially the side toward the river attracted them. They went along the balustrade above the Place Saint-Germain, and turned to the right above the Quai du Louvre. An enormous piece of decoration, composed of bucklers and lances and fasces of piled arms sculptured in the stone, terminated the flat roof, like an army watching over the frontier of their empire. They went down a little iron ladder across the Galerie des Bijoux and turned to the left above the Galerie d’Apollon. Helia followed hesitatingly; it seemed to her that the whole city was looking at them.
In reality, no one could see her. They were shut off from the Seine by the leafy tree-tops; only the cries of children playing on the lawns came up to them, mingled with the twittering of sparrows. The next moment they found themselves in gutters deep as the beds of rivers. They discovered peaceable corners which the old kings of France seemed to have built expressly for themselves. At times they might have thought themselves in gardens of stone.