Arriving in London, he thought the roof of Euston Station would fall down upon him. It was so solid, so oppressively heavy, he was glad to escape to the street. In London he spent two weeks, most of the time joyfully. The weather, it appears, was extra fine. In this strange world called London, he walked many miles every day and examined most carefully everything within reach, and he thrilled to the booming of Big Ben, the like of which he had never heard. It seemed to be an old world sound, a remnant or an aftermath of the Age of Romance. The power of its stroke almost said to him: “I am that I am!”
One evening in his wanderings he found himself in the Haymarket and saw there shoals of wretches. He was rudely shocked, in horror, in pity and dismay. When he finally escaped from the many fingers clutching at his sleeve, he thought: Is this also London—does Big Ben boom in pride for these?—and a veil slowly lifted by degrees. And in the shops where he went to make his small purchases, the rudeness, the brutal rawness of the clerks, or “clarks,” amazed him. At the Music Halls, he was equally astonished at the brilliance of the demimonde. London was too much for Louis. He lacked the worldly wisdom to grasp its immensity, the significance of its teeming, struggling population, the cold reserve in certain places. But he noted the manifold variety, the surging crowds, the dismal hardness of so many faces, and a certain ruthlessness; and everywhere, in the jammed highways, the selfish push of those who must live. So he confined himself to the pleasanter aspects, such as Hyde Park, Rotten Row, and the Thames embankment. He was curious at the vast Houses of Parliament, vertical everywhere; and St. Paul’s black with soot; and many structures in which he sensed, in their visages, the solemn weight of age. They did not appeal to him in their historic message so much as in the sense of that which is old. This massive oldness made a new sensation for him. So passed the days.
Louis left England with so many intermingling impressions thrust suddenly upon him, so many seeming contradictions and paradoxes, that time was needed for the turbid mixture to settle, to clarify, and to reveal a dominant idea.
Thus Louis reached the shores of France much puzzled as to England.
He had sailed from Dover to Dieppe.
In the course of the passage, all the transcendental curves, known and unknown to mathematics, were revealed to him by the packet, which distorted and twirled the very heavens, in its cancan with the sea.
As they moved into the little harbor of Dieppe, what was left of Louis gazed at the quaint city with acceptance and delight. How different from England. What a change in physiognomy. How cheerful the aspect—a delicate suggestion not so much of age as of medievalism; he had read about it in many books—a surviving fragrance of romance. But on the way through Normandy, Louis was equally startled, at the rigid spacing of trees, at the dinky châteaux, new-made, stuck here and there as though forming the heads of pins. All was clean, all was stiff. But the farms and the cattle were a revelation, especially the cattle—never had he seen such.
As the train passed through Rouen, twilight was under way, and the spire of the Cathedral seemed to float in the air as though there were no earth.
Arrived in Paris after nightfall, Louis saw the streets aglow. He boarded a fiacre, and shouted to the cocher:
“Hotel Saint Honoré!”
XII
Paris
After a brief stay at the Hotel St. Honoré, Louis found permanent quarters on the seventh floor of a rooming hotel, at the southeast corner Rue Monsieur le Prince and Rue Racine, in the Latin Quarter. Nearby were the “Boule Miche” toward the east, the Odeon, the Luxembourg Palace and its gardens to the southwest. From this lofty perch which he always reached on the run, two steps at a time, the City of Paris spread before him to the north, and on the small balcony, reached by casement doors, he would sometimes sit in the twilight and be caught by the solitary boom of the great bell of Notre Dame.
Early he had discovered that the French of his High School, for excellence in which he had taken first prize in a matter of course way, was not quite the colloquial French he now heard, spoken with exasperating rapidity and elision. As to the bill of fare, the menu, at the first attempt he perspired awhile in anguish, then put his finger on a line at random, and set down the result in a special notebook. He must learn current French in a hurry. He engaged a teacher to come every day at a fixed hour. When on the streets, he walked close to the people ahead, to catch every word; in this way his ear caught up words, locutions, intonations, and emphasis; and soon he began to feel he was on the way, even though he did not understand a tenth of what he heard.
He early visited the American Legation, complied with requirements, received information and advice, was told to buy certain textbooks, and was referred to a certain Monsieur Clopet as the very best tutor in mathematics. At the Legation he made the startling discovery that the Beaux Arts entrance examinations were to begin in six weeks; and furthermore, he had scanned the Program of Admission, and was startled again at the range of subjects he was not up on. Was he downhearted?
