"Ah, Rollo, is that you? I am very glad that you have come."
"I can't stay but a little while," said Rollo. "I am going to take a ride with mother."
"Are you going with mother?" asked Jennie.
"Not in the carriage with her," replied Rollo; "but I am going in the same party. I am going to have a carriage all to myself."
"O, no, Rollo," said Jennie, in a beseeching tone. "Don't go away. Stay here with me, please. I am all alone, and have not any body to amuse me."
"But you will go to sleep pretty soon," said Rollo.
"No," replied Jennie; "I am not sleepy the least in the world. See."
Here Jennie opened her eyes very wide, and looked Rollo full in the face, by way of demonstrating that she was not sleepy.
Rollo felt very much perplexed. When he pictured to himself, in imagination, the idea of being whirled rapidly through the Boulevards, on such a pleasant summer evening, in a carriage which he should have all to himself, with the top down so that he could see every thing all around him, and of the brilliant windows of the shops, the multitudes of ladies and gentlemen taking their coffee at the little round tables on the sidewalk in front of the coffee saloons, the crowds of people coming and going, and the horsemen and carriages thronging the streets, the view was so enchanting that it was very hard for him to give up the promised pleasure. He, however, determined to do it; so he said,-
"Well, Jennie, I'll stay. I will go out and tell mother that I am not going to ride, and then I will come back."
For the first half hour after Mrs. Holiday went away, Rollo was occupied with Jennie in looking over some very pretty French picture books which Mrs. Holiday had bought for her that day, to amuse her because she was sick. Jennie had looked them all over before; but now that Rollo had come, it gave her pleasure to look them over again, and talk about them with him. Jennie sat up in the bed, leaning back against the pillows and bolsters, and Rollo sat in a large and very comfortable arm chair, which he had brought up for this purpose to the bedside. The books lay on a monstrous square pillow of down, half as large as the bed itself, which, according to the French fashion, is always placed on the top of the bed. Rollo and Jennie would take the books, one at a time, and look them over, talking about the pictures, and showing the prettiest ones to each other. Thus the time passed very pleasantly. At length, however, Jennie, having looked over all the books, drew herself down into the bed, and began to ask Rollo where he had been that day.
"I have been with uncle George," said Rollo. "He said that he was going about to see a great many different places, and that I might go with him if I chose, though he supposed that most of them were places that I should not care to see. But I did. I liked to see them all."
"What places did you go to?" asked Jennie.
"Why, first we went to see the workshops. I did not know before that there were so many. Uncle George says that Paris is one of the greatest manufacturing places in the world; only they make things by hand, in private shops, and not in great manufactories, by machinery. Uncle George says there must be as much as eight or ten square miles of these shops in Paris. They are piled up to six or eight stories high. Some of the streets look like ranges of chalky cliffs facing each other, such as we see at some places on the sea shore."
"What do they make in the shops?" asked Jennie.
"O, all sorts of curious and beautiful things. They have specimens of the things that they make up, put up, like pictures in a frame, in little glass cases, on the wall next the street. We walked along through several streets and looked at these specimens. There were purses, and fringes, and watches, and gold and silver chains, and beautiful portemonnaies, and clocks, and jewelry of all kinds, and ribbons, and opera glasses, and dressing cases, and every thing you can think of."
"Yes," said Jennie, "I have seen all such things in the shop windows in the Palais Royal and in the Boulevards."
"Ah, those are the shops where they sell the things," said Rollo; "but these shops that uncle George and I went to see are where they make them. We went to one place where they were making artificial flowers, and such beautiful things you never saw. The rooms were full of girls, all making artificial flowers."
"Why did not you bring me home some of them?" asked Jennie.
"Why-I don't know," replied Rollo. "I did not think to ask if I could buy any of them.
"Then, after we had gone about in the workshops till we had seen enough, we went to the Louvre to see the paintings; though on the way we stopped to see a crèche."
Rollo pronounced the word very much as if it had been spelled crash.
"A crash!" exclaimed Jennie. "Did a building tumble down?"
"O, no," said Rollo, "it was not that. It was a place where they keep a great many babies. The poor women who have to go out to work all day carry their babies to this place in the morning, and leave them there to be taken care of, and then come and get them at night. There are some nuns there, dressed all in white, to take care of the babies. They put them in high cradles that stand all around the room."
"Were they all crying?" asked Jennie.
"O, no," said Rollo, "they were all still. When we went in they were all just waking up. The nuns put them to sleep all at the same time. Every cradle had a baby in it. Some were stretching their arms, and some were opening their eyes, and some were trying to get up. As fast as they got wide awake, the nuns would take them up and put them on the floor, at a place where there was a carpet for them to creep upon and play."
"I wish I could go and see them," said Jennie.
"You can," replied Rollo. "Any body can go and see them. The nuns like to have people come. They keep every thing very white and nice. The cradles were very pretty."
"Did they rock?" asked Jennie.
"No," replied Rollo; "they were made to swing, and not to rock. They were up so high from the floor that they could not be made to rock very well. We stayed some time in this place, and then we went away."
"And where did you go next?" asked Jennie.
"We went to the Louvre to see the famous gallery of paintings. It is a quarter of a mile long, and the walls are covered with paintings on both sides, the whole distance."
"Except where the windows are, I suppose," said Jennie.
"No," replied Rollo, "there are no interruptions for windows. The windows are up high in the ceiling, for the room is very lofty. There is room for two or three rows of paintings below the windows. It is a splendid long room."
"Were the pictures very pretty?" asked Jennie.
"Not very," said Rollo. "At least, I did not think so; but uncle George told me it was a very famous gallery. There were a great many other rooms besides, all carved and gilded most magnificently, and an immense staircase of marble, wide enough for an army to go up and down. There were several large rooms, too, full of ancient marble statues; but I did not like them very much. They looked very dark and dingy. The paintings were prettier than they.
"There were a great many persons in the painting gallery at work copying the paintings," continued Rollo. "Some were girls, and some were young men. There was one boy there not much bigger than I."
"I don't see how so small a boy could learn to paint so well," said Jennie.
"Why, he was not so very small," said Rollo. "He was bigger than I am, and I am growing to be pretty large. Besides, they have excellent schools here where they learn to draw and to paint. We went to see one of them."
"Did it look like one of our schools?" asked Jennie.
"O, no," replied Rollo; "it seemed to me more like a splendid palace than a school. We went through an iron gate into a court, and across the court to a great door, where a man came to show us the rooms. There were a great many elegant staircases, and passage ways, and halls, with pictures, and statues, and models of cities, and temples, and ruins, and every thing else necessary for the students."