Various - Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 22, August, 1878

Holland shows an architecture of two hundred years ago, the counterpart of the houses we see in the old Dutch pictures. It is of dark red brick with stone courses, and a tall slate roof behind its balustered parapet.

We are at the end of the Street of Nations, somewhat under a third of a mile in length.

It is evening, and the sun in this latitude—for we are farther north than Quebec—seems in no hurry to reach the horizon. Two hours ago the whistle sounded "No more steam," and the life of the building went out. The attendants, tired of the show and blasés or "used up," according to their nationality, with exhibitions, have shrouded their cases in sack-cloth and gone to sip ordinaire, absinthe or bitter ale. I sit on a terrace of the Champ de Mars, the gorgeous building at my back, and look riverward. Before me stretches away the green carpet of sward one hundred feet wide and six hundred long, a broad level band of emerald reaching to the gravel approach to the Pont d'Iéna, each side of which is guarded by a colossal figure of a man leading a horse. The gravel around the tapis vert is black with the figures of those whom the fineness of the evening has induced to take a parting stroll in the ground before retiring.

Flanking the gravel-walks the ground is more uneven, and Art, in imitation of the wilder aspects of Nature, has done what the limited space permitted to enhance the allied beauties of land and water, where

On the left is a rockery and waterfall on no mean scale, with a romantic little lake in front. On the right a rocky island in a corresponding lake is crowned with a thatched pavilion, the reflection of which shines broken in the water ruffled by the evening breeze. Groups of detached buildings hem in the view on each side, and their flags wave with the sky for a background. Paris is invisible: at this point the grounds are isolated from outside view.

Rising clear beyond the bridge, the approach to it on the other side hidden by the lowness of the point of view, stands the palace of the Trocadéro, a broad sweep of green covering the hill, along whose summit are the widespread wings of the colonnade, uniting at the central rotunda, of which the domed roof and square campaniles rise one hundred feet above all and dominate the middle of the picture. The traces of the indefatigable swarms of workmen are obliterated, except in the magical and finished work. The spray of the fountains of the château d'eau drifts to leeward and hides at times patches of the velvety grass on the hill. The central jet plays sturdily, and from where I sit appears to reach the level of the second corridor of the rotunda.

The eye fails to detect a single object, excepting the four statues on the bridge, which is not the creation of a few months. The hill beyond has been torn to pieces and sloped, and the palace built upon it. Every house in sight is new. The very ground in front on which I look down has been raised, and the terrace on which I sit has been built. The ponds have been excavated, the mimic rocky hills have been piled up, and the water led to the brink of the tiny precipice from the artesian wells which supply this part of Paris.

The hum of many voices and the dash of waters make a deep undertone, and one comes away with the feeling—not exactly that the scene is too good to last, but—of regret that the result of such lavish care should be ephemeral. In a few months all on the left side of the river may again be parade-ground, and the thirty thousand troops which can be readily manœuvred upon it be getting ready for another conflict, while the palace which the Genius of the Lamp had builded, as in a night, shall be a thing of the past, as if whirled away by the malevolent magician.

Early in that December the landlady's daughter came home. Percival could not fix the precise date, but he knew it was early in the month, because about the eighth or ninth he was suddenly aware that he had more than once encountered a smile, a long curl and a pair of turquoise earrings on the stairs. He had noticed the earrings: he could speak positively as to them. He had seen turquoises before, and taken little heed of them, but possibly his friends had happened to buy rather small ones. He felt pretty certain about the long curl. And he thought there was a smile, but he was not so absolutely sure of the smile.

By the twelfth he was quite sure of it. It seemed to him that it was cold work for any one to be so continually on the stairs in December. The owner of the smile had said, "Good-morning, Mr. Thorne."

On the thirteenth a question suggested itself to him: "Was she—could she be—always running up and down stairs? Or did it happen that just when he went out and came back—?" He balanced his pen in his fingers for a minute, and sat pondering. "Oh, confound it!" he said to himself, and went on writing.

That evening he left the office to the minute, and hurried to Bellevue street. He got halfway up the stairs and met no one, but he heard a voice on the landing exclaim, "Go to old Fordham's caddy, then, for you sha'n't—Oh, good gracious!" and there was a hurried rustle. He went more slowly the rest of the way, reflecting. Fordham was another lodger—elderly, as the voice had said. Percival went to his sitting-room and looked thoughtfully into his tea-caddy. It was nearly half full, and he calculated that, according to the ordinary rate of consumption, it should have been empty, and yet he had not been more sparing than usual. His landlady had told him where to get his tea: she said she found it cheap—it was a fine-flavored tea, and she always drank it. Percival supposed so, and wondered where old Fordham got his tea, and whether that was fine-flavored too.