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A NIGHT IN THE LUXEMBOURG . . I AM certainly drunk, yet my lucidity is very great. Drunk with love, drunk with pride, drunk with divinity, I see clearly things that I do not very well understand, and these things I am about to narrate. My adventure unrolls before my eyes with perfect sharpness of outline; it is a piece of faery in which I am still taking part; I am still in the midst of lights, of gestures, of voices. . . . She is there. I have only to turn my head to observe her; I have only to rise to go and touch her body with my hands, and with my lips. . . . She is there. A privilegedspectator, I have carried away with me the queen of the spectacle, a proof that the spectacle was one of the days of my actual life. That day was a night, but a night lit by a Spring sun, and, behold, it continues, night or day, I do not know. . . . The queen is there. But I must write. The abridged story of my adventure will appear to-morrow morning in the Northern Atlantic Herald, and will soon make the circuit of the American press, to return to us through the English agencies: but that does not satisfy me. I telegraphed, because it was my duty; I write, because it is my pleasure. Besides, experience has taught me that news gains rather in precision than in exactitude in its journeys from cable to cable, and I am anxious for exactitude. With what happiness I am going to write! I feel in my head, in my fingers, an unheard-of facility. . . . On the first intelligence of the pious riots that transformed into fortresses our peaceful churches, peaceful after the manner of old haunted castles, the newspaper that I have represented for ten years asked me, with a certain impatience, for details. AsI live in the Rue de Medicis, having a longstanding passion for the Luxembourg, its trees, ...
