This winter we had to give tiresome “At Homes” every Sunday from four to six. I was so pleased when those tedious two hours were over.
Every morning I went out for a ride with Sergy and had a gallop round the Park on my beautiful horse named “Sailor,” black as jet, with a coat shining like satin, which Sergy had just presented to me. In bad weather I went to a riding-school. I met there one day a stout lady perched on a pacific-looking horse, who was rolling like a barrel on her saddle. She wanted to try “Sailor,” and I seated myself good-naturedly on her old hack. We had scarcely made two or three tours, when the “fatty” tumbled off my horse and lay sprawling on the sand, whilst “Sailor,” feeling himself free from his heavy burden, went gambolling round the track, rearing and prancing after me with sheer joy of life, and trying to catch my habit with his long teeth. Loosing my head, I cried out shrilly, “Help! help!” and a gentleman who had come to the manège as a looker-on, sprang forward and was just in time to catch me in his arms as I fell from the saddle. He profited by the opportunity in coming to our “At Homes” the very next Sunday, and the Sunday after, and many other Sundays besides.
We frequented regularly the concerts of the “Philharmonic Society,” where the audience, for the most part, was far more interested in themselves than in the music to which they were supposed to listen. I often met at these concerts an elegant young man, whose gaze followed me persistently; turning my head I always found his eyes upon me. One night he came up with a friend of ours and asked to be presented to me. When the concert was over, he followed us to the cloak-room, and helped me on with my pelisse, drawing it over my shoulders with lingering tenderness of touch, and squeezed my hand in a manner that spoke volumes. According to my permission, he came to call next afternoon, which happened to be a Sunday, and took advantage of every possible occasion to visit us. Wherever I was going he would find out and go too. I do not deny that I flirted a little with him, for I love to be loved, but it was really a shame of me to put ideas into his head. He flamed up one day, and looking admiringly into my eyes, burst into the most fiery declaration, telling me he had loved me since the first time he had met me, that the fever of love consumed him night and day, and all sort of other sentimental rubbish. But my temperature, as far as he was concerned, was unvariably under zero, his great love left me unmoved, and his eloquence was all in vain. He was extremely jealous into the bargain; he was even angry with my parrot when the bird had too much of my attention. I soon became thoroughly tired of him; he exasperated me with his suppressed sighs and melancholy and I wished I hadn’t made him so fond of me. I did all in my power to discourage him and heartlessly asked him to put himself out of my way, but he would not obey me, and regardless of the weather, it might rain, snow, or storm, he was always to be seen standing before my windows on the opposite side of the street, looking up through opera glasses trying to see what I was doing inside, and looking profoundly miserable, just like a stock figure weeping on a tombstone. To arrive nearer my heart my suitor loaded me with flowers and bonbons, and bored me with passionate letters in prose and in verse, but I tossed his epistles half-read into the waste-paper basket. Everything wears out with time; his broken heart began to mend; he was seen no more and disappeared completely from my horizon.
CHAPTER L
PARIS
Towards the end of June we went to Paris to see the World’s Fair. We put up as usual at the Hôtel de Calais, a pleasant, quiet house. After having washed off the dust of our journey we started to visit the Exhibition. The passage of carriages was forbidden on the Pont d’Terra, and only foot-passengers provided with entrance tickets could cross that bridge. On entering the enclosure of the “Grand Fair,” we took the Decauville, a toy-train, which carried us round the whole place. Every now and then our eyes were arrested by vivid printed notices on the walls, advertisements about cocoa and soap, and placards put everywhere, warning the passengers not to thrust out their hands or heads out of the window, written in all the European languages except in German. The Parisians, as it seems, have nothing to say against the Teutonic visitors of the Exhibition being deprived of heads or hands! In all directions small two-wheeled waggonettes called “puss-puss,” circulated, pushed by yellow-faced Tonqinoise aborigines.
There was much to see at the Exhibition; it just made my head swim. We unweariedly enjoyed all the sights of the Champ de Mars, the gayest part of the Exhibition, crowded with visitors from all the parts of the earth and moved with the throng, being pushed to-and-fro. The Eiffel Tower was the chief attraction of the Exhibition. It is by far the highest structure in the world, being 984 feet high, and took two years to build. There were five big restaurants on the first platform, where the charges were perfectly monstrous. We had lunch at the Restaurant de Russe, and paid ten francs for a roasted chicken. We waited more than half-an-hour our turn to enter the lift, which raised us to the third platform. Whilst we were mounting gently to the very sky, we saw through the barred windows the landscape gradually diminishing; the whole horizon was disclosed and the people down below, walking about the Exhibition, appeared not bigger than flies. On each platform commemorative medals made of brass, bronze and silver were sold. The Tower had its own printing office where a newspaper, named “Le Figaro de la Tour,” was printed every day.
Night festivals were given three times a week at the Trocadero, when the Eiffel Tower was illuminated with thousands of electric lights of all the brightest colours of the rainbow, as well as the beautiful “Fontaines Lumineuses,” lighted up in a wonderful way.
We went almost every day to the Exhibition and sacrificed a whole afternoon to the French colonies: Tunis, Algiers, Dahomey and other transmarine countries, all clustered together near the Trocadero. In front of them were the cafés belonging to them. Here you could listen to the different national airs, see the different national types and costumes, and eat the different national foods.