long researches in philology and diplomatics. How full of meaning
is that old myth of Antaeus! I have touched the Earth and I am a
new man; and now at seventy years of age, new feelings of curiosity
take birth in my mind, even as young shoots sometimes spring up
from the hollow trunk of an aged oak!"


June 4.


I like to look out of my window at the Seine and its quays on those
soft grey mornings which give such an infinite tenderness of tint
to everything. I have seen that azure sky which flings so luminous
a calm over the Bay of Naples. But our Parisian sky is more
animated, more kindly, more spiritual. It smiles, threatens,
caresses--takes an aspect of melancholy or a look of merriment
like a human gaze. At this moment it is pouring down a very gentle
light on the men and beasts of the city as they accomplish their
daily tasks. Over there, on the opposite bank, the stevedores of
the Port Saint-Nicholas are unloading a cargo of cow's horns;
while two men standing on a gangway are tossing sugar-loaves from
one to the other, and thence to somebody in the hold of a steamer.
On the north quay, the cab-horses, standing in a line under the
shade of the plane-trees each with its head in a nose-bag, are
quietly munching their oats, while the rubicund drivers are drinking
at the counter of the wine-seller opposite, but all the while
keeping a sharp lookout for early customers.

The dealers in second-hand books put their boxes on the parapet.
These good retailers of Mind, who are always in the open air, with