The Birmingham age-herald., 1911-06-08

Y roih Letter by Henry Watterson, in
 the Louisville Courier-Journal.
 THE Paris of Balzac, of Dumas and
 of Hugo-even, the Paris of Thack-
 A eray-can be traced now only by the devout explorer who gives his heart and his time to 1t, patiently, and it cau- not be reconstructed except by a fancy kindred to that which created and peo- pied it. Our age does not lend itself to sentimental abstraction. It is hard to separate fact and fiction here; to decide between the false and the true; to pluck from the haze with which time has en- veloped them, and to distinguish, the puppets of actual flesh and blood who lived and moved and had their being, and the phantoms of imagination called into life and given each it's local habitation and its name by the poets pen working it's immemorial spell upon mortal credull- ty and sympathy and love.
 To me D'Artagan is rather more vital than Richelieu. Hugo's imps and Bal zac's bullies dance down the stage and shut from the view the tax-collectors and the court favorites. The mousquetaires crowd the field marshals off the scene. There is something real in Quaslmodo, in Caezar Biroteau, in Robert Macaire, something mythical in Mazarin, in the Regent and in Jean Lass. I can shut my eyes and see the Lady of Dreams as plainly as if she were coming out of the Bristol or the Ritz to step into her au- tomobile, whilst the Grande Madamoi- selle is merely cloud of clothes and words that for me mean nothing at all
 I passed half a forenoon the other day in the Musee Carnavalet. Madame Se- vigne had an apartment and held her solon there for more than 20 years. Hard by is the house where the Marquise de Brinvilliers--a gentle, blue-eyed thing tell us-a poor, insane creature she must have been-disseminated poison and death, and, just across and beyond the Place des Vosges, the Hotel de Sens, whither Queen Margot took her doll rags and did her spriting after she and Henri Quatre had agreed no longer to slide down the same cellar door. There Is in the Museum. death-nlask colored and exceeding life-like, taken the day after Ravaillac delivered the finishing knife thrust in the Reu de la Ferronnerie, which represents the Bearnaise as any thing but a tanner of hearts. He was fighter, however, from Wayback, and I dare say Dumas narrative is quite as authentic as any.
 One can scarce wonder that men like Hugo and Balzac chose this quarter of the town to live in-and Rachel, tool it giving such frequent shelter to so many of their fantastic creations, hay ing been the real abode of train of gallants and braves. of saints and har- lots from the days of Diane de Poitiers to the days of Pompadour and du Barry, and of statesmen and prelates, likewise from Sully to Necker, from Colbert to Turgot.
 The Marais is of course, in the east of Paris Most of the great cities of the world somehow started with the rising, gradually to migrate toward the setting sun. When I first knew Pahis there was little west of the Arch of Stars except groves and meadows. Neuilly and Passy were distant villages. Auteuil was safe retreat for lovers and debtors, with comic opera NlllaS neStleu III Hdil-hiu 6oiooHs' To Auteuil Armand Duval and his Ca- mile hied away for their pretty, short lived idyll. In those days there was a lovely lane called Marguerite Gautier, with a dovecote pointed out as the very rustic dwelling so pathetically sung Tn verdis tuneful score and tenderly de- scribed in the original Dumas text. The new Boulevard Montmorenci has plowed the sbrines of romance out of the knowl- edge of the living and part of the Long champs race course now occupies the spot where impecunious poets and adventure seeking wives repaired to escape the in- ouisition of cruel bailiffs and the es- pionage of suspicious and monotonous husbands.
 Tempus fugit! I used to read Thack- eray's Paris Sketches with a kind of awe. The Thirtles and the Forties, reincarnated and inspired by his glowing spirit. seemed clad in translucent garments, like the figures in the Nibelungen Lied. weird, remote, glorified. I once lived in the