may leave many burdens behind in the train at the Gare du Nord."

I shook my head.

"One cannot acquire gayety by only watching other people who are gay,"
I declared. "Paris is not for those who have anxieties, Louis. If ever
I were suffering from melancholia, for instance, I should choose some
other place for a visit."

Louis laughed softly.

"Ah! Monsieur," he answered, "you could not choose better. There is no
place so gay as this, no place so full of distractions."

I shrugged my shoulders.

"It is your native city," I reminded him.

"That goes for nothing," Louis answered. "Where I live, there always I
make my native city. I have lived in Vienna and Berlin, Budapest and
Palermo, Florence and London. It is not an affair of the place. Yet of
all these, if one seeks it, there is most distraction to be found
here. Monsieur does not agree with me," he added, glancing into my
face. "There is one thing more which I would tell him. Perhaps it is
the explanation. Paris, the very home of happiness and gayety, is also
the loneliest and the saddest city in the world for those who go
alone."

"There is truth in what you say, Louis," I admitted.