In the Days of My Youth: A Novel

"_Halte là_! I thought I should catch you about this time! They've been giving you unconscionable good measure to-day, though, haven't they? I thought Bollinet's lecture was alw...

It was just eight o'clock when we started, with the twilight coming on. Our course lay up the river, with a strong current setting against us; so we made but little way, and enj...

The most genial of companions was our new acquaintance, Franz Müller, the art-student. Light-hearted, buoyant, unassuming, he gave his animal spirits full play, and was the life...

The marriage took place in a little out-of-the-way Protestant chapel beyond the barriers, at about a quarter before ten o'clock the next morning. Dalrymple and I were there firs...

"When a set of men find themselves agree in any particular, though never so trivial, they establish themselves into a kind of fraternity, and meet once or twice a week."--_Spect...

Three years of foreign travel, and five of retirement at home, brought my twenty-ninth birthday. I was still young, it is true; but how changed from that prime of early manhood...

My acquaintance with Mademoiselle Josephine progressed rapidly; although, to confess the truth, I soon found myself much less deeply in love than I had at first supposed. For th...

I had, as usual, attended Madame de Marignan one evening to the Opera, and found myself, also as usual, neglected for a host of others. There was one man in particular whom I ha...

It was after receiving the last of these letters that I hazarded a third visit to Madame de Courcelles. This time, I ventured to present myself at her door about midday, and was...

Madame Marotte, as I have already mentioned more than once, lived in the Rue du Faubourg St. Denis; which, as all the world knows, is a prolongation of the Rue St. Denis--just a...

The rain beat in my face and almost blinded me, the wind hustled me; the gendarme at the corner of the street looked at me suspiciously; and still I followed, and still the tall...

At ten o'clock on Monday evening, Dalrymple called for me, and by ten o'clock, thanks to the great Michaud and other men of genius, I presented a faultless exterior. My friend w...

Sweet, secluded, shady Saxonholme! I doubt if our whole England contains another hamlet so quaint, so picturesquely irregular, so thoroughly national in all its rustic character...

To the man who lives alone and walks about with his eyes open, the mere bricks and mortar of a great city are instinct with character. Buildings become to him like living creatu...

After a more than usually severe winter, the early spring came, crowned with rime instead of primroses. Paris was intensely cold. In March the Seine was still frozen, and snow l...

The society of the outer salon differed essentially from the society of the inner salon at the Café Procope. It was noisier--it was shabbier--it was smokier. The conversation in...

The aspect of affairs, meanwhile, was materially changed. Müller no longer stood in the position of a leniently-treated offender. He had become accuser, and plaintiff. A grave b...

My adventure with Miss Lascelles did me good service, and cured me for some time, at least, of my leaning towards the tender passion. I consequently devoted myself more closely...

Dr. Chéron was standing with his feet firmly planted in the tiger-skin rug and his back to the fireplace. I was busy writing at the study table, and glancing anxiously from time...

Having despatched the venerable Coligny much to her own satisfaction and apparently to the satisfaction of her hearers, Mdlle. Honoria returned to private life; Messieurs Philom...

THE _Toison d' Or_ was but a modest little establishment as regarded the house, but it was surrounded on three sides by a good-sized garden overlooking the river. Here, in the t...

There are times when this beautiful world seems to put on a mourning garb, as if sympathizing, like a gentle mother, with the grief that consumes us; when the trees shake their...

"But, my dear fellow, what else could you have expected? You took Mam'selle Josephine to the _Opera Comique. Eh bien!_ you might as well have taken an oyster up Mount Vesuvius....

Müller and I dined merrily at the Café of the Trois Frères Provençaux, discussed our coffee and cigars outside the Rotonde in the Palais Royal, and then started off in search of...

Ye who have traced the pilgrim to the scene Which is his last, if in your memories dwell A thought that once was his, if on ye swell A single recollection, not in vain He wore h...

Allowing for my inexperience in the use of the language, I prospered better than I had expected, and found, to my satisfaction, that I was by no means behind my French fellow-st...

But all be that he was a philosophre, Yet hadde he but litel gold in cofre, But all that he might of his frends hente, On bokes and on lerning he is spente.

The dear old Quartier Latin of my time--the Quartier Latin of Balzac, of Béranger, of Henry Murger---the Quartier Latin where Franz Müller had his studio; where Messieurs Gustav...

My journey, even at this distance of time, appears to me like an enchanted dream. I observed, yet scarcely remembered, the scenes through which I passed, so divided was I betwee...

A week or two had thus gone by since the dreadful evening at the Opéra Comique, and all this time I had neither seen nor heard more of the fair Josephine. My acquaintance with F...

In Paris, a lodging-house (or, as they prefer to style it, a _hôtel meublé_) is a little town in itself; a beehive swarming from basement to attic; a miniature model of the grea...

"You have my Paris address upon my card," he said, as we walked to and fro upon the platform. "It's just a bachelor's den, you know--and I shall be there in about a fortnight or...

So away I darted, called to Collins to follow me, and set off at a brisk pace towards the Red Lion Hotel. Collins was our indoor servant; a sharp, merry fellow, some ten years o...

It seemed to me that I had but just closed my eyes, when I was waked by a hand upon my shoulder, and a voice calling me by my name. I started up to find the early sunshine pouri...

Abolished by the National Convention of 1793, re-established in 1795, reformed by the first Napoleon in 1803, and remodelled in 1816 on the restoration of the Bourbons, the Acad...

"Brunet," he continued, addressing me again, "is faithful and sagacious. He will instruct you on certain points indispensable to a resident in Paris, and will see that you are n...

We drove straight to Dalrymple's rooms, and, going in with a pass-key, went up without disturbing the _concierge_. Arrived at home, my friend's first act was to open his buffeti...

Neither the example of Oscar Dalrymple nor the broadcloth of the great Michaud, achieved half so much for my education as did the apprenticeship I was destined to serve to Madam...

"So, it is Monsieur Müller who has done me this service," he said coldly; but with a flash in his eye like the sudden glint in the eye of a cobra di capello. "I will take care n...

Müller, when he so confidently proposed to visit Bras de Fer in his future retirement at Toulon, believed that he had only to lodge his information with the proper authorities,...

"Cause! Do you suppose they trouble themselves to find one? Not a bit of it. They simply scrawl a great R in chalk on the back of it, and send you a printed notice to carry it h...

Hoping, yet scarcely expecting to see her, I went out upon my balcony the next night at the same hour; but the light of her lamp was bright within, no shadow obscured it, and no...

I looked round, and found myself in a dingy, ordinary sort of Café, in no wise differing from any other dingy, ordinary sort of Café in that part of Paris. The decorations were...

A week went by--a fortnight went by--and still Hortense prolonged her mysterious absence. Where could she be gone? Was she ill? Had any accident befallen her on the road? What i...

"Will these ladies do us the honor of letting us row them back to Courbevoie?" said Müller, running our boat close in against the sedges, and pulling off his hat as respectfully...

"You are just in time, Arbuthnot, to do me a service," said Dalrymple, looking up from his desk as I went in, and reaching out his hand to me over a barricade of books and papers.

Beautifully and truly, in the fourth book of the most poetical of stories, has a New World romancist described the state of a sorrowing lover. "All around him," saith he, "seeme...

Having seen Dalrymple to his lodgings and dressed his wound, which was, in truth, but a very slight one, I left him and went home, promising to return in a few hours, and help h...

I had spoken to my father more than once upon the subject--spoken earnestly and urgently, as one who felt the necessity and justice of his appeal. But he put me off from time to...

I was waked by my father's voice calling to me from the garden, and so started up with that strange and sudden sense of trouble which most of us have experienced at some time or...

Twice already, in accordance with my promise to Dalrymple, I had called upon Madame de Courcelles, and finding her out each time, had left my card, and gone away disappointed. F...

It was a glorious morning--first morning of the first week in the merry month of June--as I took my customary way to Dr. Chéron's house in the Faubourg St. Germain. I had seen D...

The Rue des Fossés-Saint-Germain-des-Près and the Rue de l'Ancienne Comédie are one and the same. As the Rue des Fossés-Saint-Germain-des-Près, it dates back to somewhere about...

Births, deaths and marriages are the great events of a country town; the prime novelties of a country newspaper; the salt of conversation, and the soul of gossip. An individual...

I rang the bell again. Two or three more waiters came, and the master of the hotel. They all treated my communication in the same manner--coolly; incredulously; but with unruffl...

My acquaintance with Hortense Dufresnoy progressed slowly as, ever, and not even the Froissart incident went far towards promoting it. Absorbed in her studies, living for the in...

He flung us off, as a baited bull flings off a pack of curs. For myself, though I received only a backhanded blow on the chest, I staggered as if I had been struck with a sledge...