Bernard had seen these ladies only
in borrowed and provisional abodes; but here was a place where they were
really living and which was stamped with their tastes, their habits,
their charm. The little salon was very elegant; it contained a
multitude of pretty things, and it appeared to Bernard to be arranged
in perfection. The long windows--the ceiling being low, they were really
very short--opened upon one of those solid balconies, occupying the
width of the apartment, which are often in Paris a compensation for
living up five flights of stairs, and this balcony was filled with
flowers and cushions. Bernard stepped out upon it to await the coming
of Mrs. Vivian, and, as she was not quick to appear, he had time to
see that his friends enjoyed a magnificent view. They looked up at the
triumphal Arch, which presented itself at a picturesque angle, and near
the green tree-tops of the Champs Elysees, beyond which they caught a
broad gleam of the Seine and a glimpse, blue in the distance, of the
great towers of Notre Dame. The whole vast city lay before them and
beneath them, with its ordered brilliancy and its mingled aspect of
compression and expansion; and yet the huge Parisian murmur died away
before it reached Mrs.
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