The Thirties and the Forties, reincarnated and inspired by his glowing spirit, seemed clad in translucent garments, like the figures in the Nibelungenlied, weird, remote, glorified.

I once lived in the street "for which no rhyme our language yields," next door to a pastry shop that claimed to have furnished the mise en scene for the "Ballad of Bouillabaisse," and I often followed the trail of Louis Dominic Cartouche "down that lonely and crooked byway that, setting forth from a palace yard, led finally to the rear gate of a den of thieves." Ah, well-a-day! I have known my Paris now twice as long as Thackeray knew his Paris, and my Paris has been as interesting as his Paris, for it includes the Empire, the Siege and the Republic.
I knew and sat for months at table with Comtesse Walewska, widow of the bastard son of Napoleon Bonaparte.

The Duke de Morny was rather a person in his way and Gambetta was no slouch, as Titmarsh would himself agree.
I knew them both.

The Mexican scheme, which was going to make every Frenchman rich, was even more picturesque and tragical than the Mississippi bubble.

There were lively times round about the last of the Sixties and the early Seventies.