Produced by Joshua Hutchinson, Tonya Allen and PG Distributed
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After General Lafayette's visit to the United States, in 1824, everyAmerican who went to France went with a firm conviction that he hada right to take as much as he chose of the old gentleman's time andhospitality, at his own estimate of their value. Fortunately, the numberof travellers was not great in those days, although a week seldom passedwithout bringing two or three new faces to the Rue d'Anjou or La Grange.It was well both for the purse and the patience of the kind-hearted oldman that ocean steamers were still a doubtful problem, and first-classpackets rarely over five hundred tons.
It could hardly be expected that a boy of sixteen should have morediscretion than his elders; and following the universal example of mycountrymen, the first use that I made of a Parisian cabriolet was todrive to No. 6, Rue d'Anjou. The porte cochère was open, and theporter in his lodge,—a brisk little Frenchman, somewhat past middleage, with just bows enough to prove his nationality, and very expressivegestures, which I understood much better than I did his words; for theysaid, or seemed to say,—"The General is out, and I will take chargeof your letter and card." There was nothing else for me to do, andso, handing over my credentials, I gave the rest of the morning tosightseeing, and, being a novice at it and alone, soon got tired andreturned to my hotel.
I don't know how that hotel would look to me now; but to my untrainedeyes of that day it looked wonderfully fine. I liked the name,—thePetit Hôtel Montmorenci,—for I knew enough of French history to knowthat Montmorenci had always been a great name in France. Then it was thefavorite resort of Americans; and although I was learning the phrasesin Blagdon as fast as I could, I still found English by far the mostagreeable means of communication for everything beyond an appeal to thewaiter for more wood or a clean towel. Table d'Hôte, too, brought usall together, with an abundant, if not a rich, harvest of personalexperiences gathered during the day from every quarter of the teemingcity. Bradford was there with his handsome face and fine figure,—an oldresident, as it then seemed to me; for he had been abroad two years, andcould speak what sounded to my ears as French-like as any French I hadever heard. Poor fellow! scarce three years had passed when he laid himdown to his last sleep in a convent of Jerusalem, without a friend tosmooth his pillow or listen to his last wishes. Of most of the othersthe names have escaped me; but I shall never forget how wide I openedmy eyes, one evening, at the assertion of a new-comer, that he had donemore for the enlightenment of France than any man living or dead. Theincomparable gravity with which the assertion was made drew every eye tothe speaker, who, after enjoying our astonishment for a while, told usthat he had been the first to send out a whaler from Havre, and hadsecured almost a monopoly of the oil-trade. Some years afterwards I madea passage with his brother, and learned from him the history ofthis Yankee enterprise, which had filled two capacious purses, andsubstituted the harpoon for the pruning-knife, the whale-ship for theolive-orchard, in the very stronghold of the emblem of peace; and nowthe collier with his pickaxe has driven them both from the field. Butthe Petit Hotel Montmorenci did not wait for the change. Its broad courtwas never enlivened by ga