We have done our whole duty by it.

We have seen the Tuileries, the Napoleon Column, the Madeleine, that wonder of wonders the tomb of Napoleon, all the great churches and museums, libraries, imperial palaces, and sculpture and picture galleries, the Pantheon, Jardin des Plantes, the opera, the circus, the legislative body, the billiard rooms, the barbers, the grisettes-- Ah, the grisettes! I had almost forgotten.

They are another romantic fraud.

They were (if you let the books of travel tell it) always so beautiful--so neat and trim, so graceful--so naive and trusting--so gentle, so winning--so faithful to their shop duties, so irresistible to buyers in their prattling importunity--so devoted to their poverty-stricken students of the Latin Quarter--so lighthearted and happy on their Sunday picnics in the suburbs--and oh, so charmingly, so delightfully immoral! Stuff! For three or four days I was constantly saying: "Quick, Ferguson! Is that a grisette ?" And he always said, "No." He comprehended at last that I wanted to see a grisette.

Then he showed me dozens of them.