It is true that the moderate pleasures of Major Anspach did not materially encroach on his pocket, and for this we deem the cidevant musqueteer worthy of eulogium. He limited his enjoyments to a promenade in the Tuileries, each time that the sun deigned to shine on its precincts, happy alike when the Dog Star raged or under the frozen beams of a wintry sky. As this orb however rarely deigns to show us his face in unclouded brilliance, our old friend had made it his profound study to discover that part of the garden in which he could enjoy the rays of Phœbus without exposure to their intensity.
After much research and divers trials, the major at last made his choice. At the extremity of the terrace des Feuillants is a platform, embowered in trees and shrubs, which commands a view of the Place de la Concorde, and the architectural entrance to that part of the garden. A balustrade terminates this platform, and by a graceful sweep conducts you to a pleasant enclosure between the avenues and the western gate of the Tuileries. This turn in the balustrade forms then, as you will perceive, an acute angle with the line of the platform, and it is of the summit of this angle, whose sides are composed of two walls about twelve feet high, which form a fortified corner, that we are going to speak. Exposed to the rising sun, this spot (as the reader may ascertain for himself if he likes) seems expressly constructed in order to concentrate the greatest possible heat in the smallest space, which heat would indeed be insupportable were it not surrounded with flowering shrubs and thickets to render it agreeable to the frequenters of the place.
Major Anspach, for reasons pertaining a little to his plush inexpressibles, avoided all contact with the passing crowd; and although gazing with pleasure on the sports of the children who visited the garden, nothing would have annoyed him more than too close a proximity to the young rogues, or to the fresh and frisky damsels with laughing eyes who had charge of the juveniles. It was essential to his comfort, therefore, to select a position where he could see without being seen, and also that his seat should be of such narrow limits that when he once occupied it, no one could expect to share it with him.