One might argue that this was a somewhat childish and theatrical point of view for the young man to have taken. He probably found in Paris exactly what he brought there, and it seems hardly fair, because the city was stronger than he, that he should blame her and call her a hard name. Paris is something much better than that, only the young man was probably not looking for anything better. He had taken her frivolous side too seriously, and had not sought for her better side at all. Some one should have told him that Paris makes a most agreeable mistress, but a very hard master.
There are a few Americans who do not know this until it is too late, until they lose their heads with all the turmoil and beauty and unending pleasures of the place, and grow to believe that the voice of Paris is the voice of the whole world. Perhaps they have heard the voice speak once; it has praised a picture which they have painted, or a book of verses that they have written, or a garden fête that they have given, at which there were present as many as three ambassadors. And they sit breathless ever after, waiting for the voice to speak to them again, and while they are waiting Paris is exclaiming over some new picture, or another fête, at which there were four ambassadors; and the poor little artist or the poor little social struggler wonders why he is forgotten, and keeps on struggling and fluttering and biting his nails and eating his heart out in private, listening for the voice to speak his name once more.
[Illustration: "LISTENING FOR THE VOICE TO SPEAK HIS NAME ONCE MORE"]
He will not believe that his time has come and gone, and that Paris has no memory, and no desire but to see and to hear some new thing. She has taken his money and eaten his dinners and hung his pictures once or twice in a good place; but, now that his money is gone, Paris has other dinners to eat, and other statues to admire, and no leisure time to spend at his dull receptions, which have taken the place of his rare dinners, or to climb to his garret when there is a more amusing and more modern painter on the first floor.
Paris is full of these poor hangers-on, who have allowed her to use them and pat them on the back, and who cannot see that her approbation is not the only reward worth the striving for, but who go on year after year tagging in her train, beseeching her to take some notice of them. They are like the little boys who run beside the coaches and turn somersaults to draw a copper from the passengers on top, and who are finally left far behind, unobserved and forgotten beside the dusty road. The wise man and the sensible man takes the button or the medal or the place on a jury that Paris gives him, and is glad to get it, and proud of the recognition and of the source from which it comes, and then continues on his way unobserved, working for the work's sake. He knows that Paris has taught him much, but that she has given him all she can, and that he must now work out his own salvation for himself.