And one afternoon when the sky wuz blue, the sun shone and the birds sung merrily, we went to that dretful place, the Paris morgue. There wuz a crowd before the doors, for the Seine had yielded a rich harvest that mornin’; there wuz five silent forms, colder than the marble they lay on, one a young woman with long hair falling about her white shoulders. Amongst the crowd that pressed forward to look at that unfortunate wuz a bent, haggard form that I thought I recognized. But if it wuz a father watching and waiting in dretful hope and still more dretful fear for the best beloved, 304 I couldn’t tell, for the crowd pressed forward and he disappeared almost before I saw him. And I too wuz agitated, for when I catched sight of the clustering hair, the pretty rounded arms and form, an awful fear clutched my heart that I trembled like a popple leaf and I see Dorothy turn white as a sheet and Arvilly and Miss Meechim looked like them that sees a tragedy and so did Robert Strong and Josiah.
But a closter look made us know that it wuz no one that we ever see. It wuz not the dear one who wuz in our hearts day and night, it wuz not our sweet Aronette and it wuz not Lucia. Poor father! doomed to hunt in vain for her as long as his tremblin’ limbs could carry him to and fro under foreign skies and the sun and stars of his own land. Poor seekin’ eyes, turnin’ away at the very last from visions of green pastures and still waters to look once more down the sin-cursed streets of earth for his heart’s treasure! Dying eyes, dim with a black shadow, blacker than the shadow of the Valley, cast from Agony and Sin, sold to the crazed multitude for its undoing by sane men for the silver of Judas. Love stronger than life, mightier than death, never to be rewarded here. But we read of a time of rewards for deeds done in the body. At whose dying beds will these black forms stand, whose shadows torment humanity, to claim their own and go out with them to their place they have prepared here for their soul’s dwelling? Hard question, but one that will have to be answered.
Robert Strong and Dorothy wanted to visit the Pantheon; specially the tomb of Victor Hugo. It is a great buildin’ with a dome that put me some in mind of our own Capitol at Washington, D. C. It is adorned with paintings and statutes by the most eminent artists and sculptors, and the mighty shades of the past seem to walk through the solemn aisles with us, specially before the statute of Victor Hugo. I felt considerable well acquainted with him, havin’ hearn Thomas J. read his books so much. And as I stood 305 there I had a great number of emotions thinkin’ what Victor had went through from his native land from first to last: abuse, persecutions, sent off and brung back, etc., and I thought of how his faithful “Toiler of the Sea” went through superhuman labors to end in disappintment at last. And Jean Valjean, the martyr, seemed to walk along in front of me patiently guardin’ and tendin’ little Cossette, who wuz to pierce his noble, steadfast heart with the sharpest thorn in the hull crown of thorns––ingratitude, onrequited affection, and neglect.
And we stood before the Column Vendome and meditated on that great, queer creeter, Napoleon. Who but he would think of meltin’ the cannons he had took in battle from his enemies and makin’ a triumphal monument of ’em a hundred and forty feet high, with his own figger on top.
CHAPTER XXVI
Well, Miss Meechim wanted to see the Goblin tapestry, so we visited the Goblin manufactory. These tapestries are perfectly beautiful, fourteen thousand shades of wool are used in their construction. What would Sister Sylvester Bobbett say? She thought the colors in her new rag carpet went ahead of anything, and she didn’t have more’n fourteen at the outside, besides black and but-nut color. But fourteen thousand colors––the idee!
Yes, we rid through the marvellously beautiful streets under triumphal arches and more warlike ones and visited all the most beautiful sights in the city and the adjacent country, and who do you spoze I met as I walked along in the Bois de Boulogne? It wuz the Princess Ulaly. The rest of our party wuz some little distance off and I wuz santerin’ along charmed with the beauty about me when who should I meet face to face but Ulaly. Yes, it wuz Ulaly Infanty.
I wuz highly tickled, for I considered her a likely young woman and sot store by her when I met her to home at the World’s Fair. She knowed me in a minute and seemed as glad to see me as I wuz her, and I sez to her most the first thing after the compliments wuz passed, “Who would have thought, Ulaly, when we parted in Chicago, U. S., that the next time we should meet would be in Paris?”