AMERICANS who go to Paris might be divided, for the purposes of this article at least, into two classes—those who use Paris for their own improvement or pleasure, and those who find her too strong for them, and who go down before her and worship her, and whom she either fashions after her own liking, or rides under foot and neglects until they lose heart and disappear forever.
Balzac, in the last paragraph of one of his novels, leaves his hero standing on the top of a hill above Paris, shaking his fist at the city below him, and cursing her for a wanton.
One might argue that this was a somewhat childish and theatrical point of view for the young man to have taken. He probably found in Paris exactly what he brought there, and it seems hardly fair, because the city was stronger than he, that he should blame her and call her a hard name. Paris is something much better than that, only the young man was probably not looking for anything better. He had taken her frivolous side too seriously, and had not sought for her better side at all. Some one should have told him that Paris makes a most agreeable mistress, but a very hard master.
There are a few Americans who do not know this until it is too late, until they lose their heads with all the turmoil and beauty and unending pleasures of the place, and grow to believe that the voice of Paris is the voice of the whole world. Perhaps they have heard the voice speak once; it has praised a picture which they have painted, or a book of verses that they have written, or a garden fête that they have given, at which there were present as many as three ambassadors. And they sit breathless ever after, waiting for the voice to speak to them again, and while they are waiting Paris is exclaiming over some new picture, or another fête, at which there were four ambassadors; and the poor little artist or the poor little social struggler wonders why he is forgotten, and keeps on struggling and fluttering and biting his nails and eating his heart out in private, listening for the voice to speak his name once more.
"LISTENING FOR THE VOICE TO SPEAK HIS NAME ONCE MORE"