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“ ‘No, you forgiveto me now, in this little hotel rooive each other But we don’t forgive his are between us:

“ ‘Only now because we are tired, and things are dreary…’ I said to her and to myself, because there was no one else in the world to whom I could speak

“ ‘Ah, yes; and that is what in to understand that we have done it all wrong froe, our people I want to go directly now to Paris’ ”

PART III

“I think the very naht a rush of pleasure tothat I was amazed, not only that I could feel it, but that I’d so nearly forgotten it

“I wonder if you can understand what it meant My expression can’t convey it now, for what Paris means to me is very different from what it meant then, in those days, at that hour; but still, even now, to think of it, I feel so akin to that happiness And I’ve more reason now than ever to say that happiness is not what I will ever know, or will ever deserve to know I am not so much in love with happiness Yet the name Paris makes me feel it

“Mortal beauty often ing I felt so hopelessly in the Mediterranean Sea But Paris, Paris drew ot the da that doted on htened and rewarded more richly than any promise

“It was the iven New Orleans its life, its first populace; and it hat New Orleans had for so long tried to be But New Orleans, though beautiful and desperately alive, was desperately fragile There was so that threatened the exotic and sophisticated life both from within and without Not an inch of those wooden streets nor a brick of the crowded Spanish houses had not been bought from the fierce wilderness that forever surrounded the city, ready to engulf it Hurricanes, floods, fevers, the plague, and the damp of the Louisiana climate itself worked tirelessly on every hewn plank or stone facade, so that New Orleans seeination of her striving populace, a dreah unconscious, collective will

“But Paris, Paris was a universe, whole and entire unto herself, hollowed and fashioned by history; so she sees, hermedieval streets — as vast and indestructible as nature itself All was eing the galleries, the theaters, the cafes, giving birth over and over to genius and sanctity, philosophy and war, frivolity and the finest art; so it seemed that if all the world outside her were to sink into darkness, as fine, as beautiful, as essential ht there still coraced and sheltered her streets were attuned to her — and the waters of the Seine, contained and beautiful as they wound through her heart; so that the earth on that spot, so shaped by blood and consciousness, had ceased to be the earth and had become Paris

“We were ali

ve again We were in love, and so euphoric was I after those hopeless nights of wandering in eastern Europe that I yielded completely when Claudia moved us into the Hote1 Saint-Gabriel on the Boulevard des Capucines It was ruest hotels in Europe, its i theit with a comfortable splendor We were to have one of the finest suites Our s looked out over the gas-lit boulevard itself where, in the early evening, the asphalt sidewalks teees flowed past, taking lavishly dressed ladies and their gentlemen to the Opera or the Opera Comique, the ballet, the theaters, the balls and receptions without end at the Tuileries

“Claudia put her reasons for expense to ically, but I could see that she beca for her The hotel, she said, quietly afforded us co unnoticed in the continual press of European tourists, our rooms immaculately maintained by an anonyuaranteed our privacy and our security But there was more to it than that There was a feverish purpose to her buying

“ ‘This is my world,’ she explained to me as she sat in a s row of brougha one by one before the hotel doors ‘Ito herself And so it was as she liked, stunning wallpaper of rose and gold, an abundance of damask and velvet furniture, es for the fourposter bed Dozens of roses appeared daily for thethe curtained alcove of her dressing room, reflected endlessly in tilted h French ith a veritable garden of ca else I ht after theht fronificent canvases such as I’d never seen in New Orleans — fro you to reach for the petals that fell on a three-di style in which the colors seemed to blaze with such intensity they destroyed the old lines, the old solidity, to make a vision like to those states when I’row before my eyes and crackle like the flames of lamps Paris flowed into these rooms

“I founddreaentle insistence had given me, because the air eet like the air of our courtyard in the Rue Royale, and all was alive with a shocking profusion of gas light that rendered even the ornate lofty ceilings devoid of shadows The light raced on the gilt curlicues, flickered in the baubles of the chandeliers Darkness did not exist Vampires did not exist

“And even bent as I was on my quest, it eet to think that, for an hour, father and daughter climbed into the cabriolet fro the banks of the Seine, over the bridge into the Latin Quarter to roam those darker, narrower streets in search of history, not victi clock and the brass andirons and the playing cards laid out upon the table Books of poets, the progra of the vast hotel, distant violins, a wo of a hairbrush, and aover and over to the night air, ‘I understand, I a to understand…’