I have just been drinking in some of the magic of Paris. I stood in the Tuileries Gardens after sunset and saw the “arc do Triomphe du Carrousel” surmounted with a magnificent bronze chariot group; though one arch was the obelisk of the place de la Concorde; and in the mauve distance, the arc de triomphe de l’Etoile, all silhouetted against a Turner sky with gray-purple clouds. And quiet around, though it’s only a hundred metres from rue de Rivoli.
I never saw a city so full of public buildings and points of interest. I could bore you today with the history of everything I saw, because forsooth, I only went to see the things I had read up on a bit.
Such as the Palais Royal, and in back of it, the Galeries d’Orleans which is a great open quadrangle of fountains, statues straight paths and miraculously straight rows (8 of them) of trees running the entire length of it. This place was formerly the social and political center of France and is where plans for the revolution were hatched.
Further on is the old church of St. Roch, whose rich and beautiful interior I intend to explore some day. But today its chief interest was the fact that one Napoleon came into prominence before its doors when he trained his cannons on the royalists gathered in the open place.
Next post September 14
Letters from Sidney Friend During The Great War 