The next morning Henry wished to begin a systematic course of the monuments of Paris and the artistic genius of the French nation. But Tom would not get up. At eleven o'clock Henry, armed with a map and the English talent for exploration, set forth alone to grasp the general outlines of the city, and came back successful at half-past one. At half-past two Tom was inclined to consider the question of getting up, and Henry strolled out again and lost himself between the Moulin Rouge and the Church of Sacré Coeur. It was turned four o'clock when he sighted the façade of the hotel, and by that time Tom had not only arisen, but departed, leaving a message that he should be back at six o'clock. So Henry wandered up and down the boulevard, from the Madeleine to Marguéry's Restaurant, had an automatic tea at the Express-Bar, and continued to wander up and down the boulevard.
He felt that he could have wandered up and down the boulevard for ever.
And then night fell; and all along the boulevard, high on seventh storeys and low as the street names, there flashed and flickered and winked, in red and yellow and a most voluptuous purple, electric invitations to drink inspiriting liqueurs and to go and amuse yourself in places where the last word of amusement was spoken. There was one name, a name almost revered by the average healthy Englishman, which wrote itself magically on the dark blue sky in yellow, then extinguished itself and wrote itself anew in red, and so on tirelessly: that name was 'Folies-Bergère.' It gave birth to the most extraordinary sensations in Henry's breast. And other names, such as 'Casino de Paris,' 'Eldorado,' 'Scala,' glittered, with their guiding arrows of light, from bronze columns full in the middle of the street. And what with these devices, and the splendid glowing windows of the shops, and the enlarged photographs of surpassingly beautiful women which hung in heavy frames from almost every lamp-post, and the jollity of the slowly-moving crowds, and the incredible illustrations displayed on the newspaper kiosks, and the moon creeping up the velvet sky, and the thousands of little tables at which the jolly crowds halted to drink liquids coloured like the rainbow--what with all that, and what with the curious gay feeling in the air, Henry felt that possibly Berlin, or Boston, or even Timbuctoo, might be a suitable and proper place for an engaged young man, but that decidedly Paris was not.