"What?" I asked.
"That we are in the Latin Quarter? Why this boulevard is beautiful, and I had always pictured the Latin Quarter as very dreadful."
"It's the inhabitants that are dreadful," said I with a shudder as a black-eyed young girl, in passing, gave me an amused and exceedingly saucy smile.
The "Quarter!" It is beautiful—one of the most beautiful portions of Paris. The Luxembourg Gardens are the centre and heart of the Latin Quarter—these ancient gardens, with their groves of swaying chestnuts all in bloom, quaint weather-beaten statues in a grim semicircle looking out over the flowering almonds on the terrace to the great blue basin of the fountain where toy yachts battle with waves almost an inch high.
Here the big drab-colored pigeons strut and coo in the sunshine, here the carp splash in the mossy fountain of Marie de Medici, here come the nursemaids with their squalling charges, to sit on the marble benches and coquette with the red-trousered soldiers, who are the proper and natural prey of all nursemaids in all climes.
"What is that banging and squeaking?" asked Alida, as we entered the foliage of the southern terrace. "Not Punch and Judy—oh, I haven't seen Punch since I was centuries younger! Do let us go, papa!"
Around the painted puppet box children sat, open-mouthed. Back of them crowded parents and nurses and pretty girls and gay young officers, while, from the pulpit, Punch held forth amid screams of infantile delight, or banged his friends with his stick in the same old fashion that delighted us all—centuries since.
"Such a handsome officer," said Alida under her breath.
The officer in question, a dragoon, was looking at Dulcima in that slightly mischievous yet well-bred manner peculiar to European officers.
Dulcima did not appear to observe him.