PARIS, May 5, 1893.
[DEAR MOTHER:]
It is a narrow street with apartment houses of gray stone
and iron balconies along either side of it. The sun sets at
one end of the street at different times during
the day and we all lean out on the balconies to look. On
the house, one below mine, on the other side of our street, is
a square sign that says:
ALFRED DE MUSSET
EST MORT DANS CETTE MAISON
A great many beautiful ladies with the fashionable red
shade of hair still call there, as they used to do when the
proper color was black and it was worn in a chignon and the
Second Empire had but just begun. While they wait they
stretch out in their carriages and gaze up at the balconies
until they see me, and as I wear a gold and pink silk wrapper
and not much else, they concentrate all their attention on the
wrapper and forget to drop a sigh for the poet. There are two
young people on the sixth floor opposite, who come out on the
balcony after dinner and hold on to each other and he tells
her all about the work of the day. Below there is a woman who
sews nothing but black dresses, and who does that all day and
all night by the light of a lamp. And below the concierge
stands all day in a lace cap and black gown and blue, and
looks up the street and down the street like the woman in
front of Hockley's. But on the floor opposite mine there
is
a beautiful lady in a pink and white wrapper with long black
hair and sleepy black eyes. She does not take any interest in
my pink wrapper, but contents herself with passing cabs and
stray dogs and women with loaves of bread and bottles in their
hands who occasionally stray into our street. At six she
appears in another gown and little slippers and a butterfly
for a hat and says "Good-by" to the old concierge and trips
off to dinner. Lots of love to all.
DICK.
