My student footsteps took me many times through that quiet street, but never without a vision of the poet-critic flashing back, as I glanced up at the window where he had stood and talked with us; as my friend predicted, Sainte-Beuve's writings had become a precious part of my small library, the memory of his genial face adding a vivid interest to their perusal.
I made a little Pilgrimage recently to the quiet old garden where, after many years' delay, a bust of this writer has been unveiled, with the same companion, now very old, who thirty years ago presented me to the original.
There is, perhaps, in all Paris no more exquisite corner than the Garden of the Luxembourg. At every season it is beautiful. The winter sunlight seems to linger on its stately Italian terraces after it has ceased to shine elsewhere. The first lilacs bloom here in the spring, and when midsummer has turned all the rest of Paris into a blazing, white wilderness, these gardens remain cool and tranquil in the heart of turbulent "Bohemia," a bit of fragrant nature filled with the song of birds and the voices of children.
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