ABSTRACT
Swiftly the weeks flew by, and the second gay season of Paris had already opened its winter hospitality to foreign guests. The brilliant salons of the capital were filled with the wit and eloquence of all nations, and having shown how effervescent and beautifully pert she can be in May and June, Paris proudly demonstrated to the world how she could find within herself, despite inclement weather, the resources and the delicacies of refined pleasures. The large and graceful building, in which splendour blended with domestic comfort, stood proudly serene upon the height that looks down on the park of Saint Cloud and away to the glorious forest of trees which the Parisian bourgeois loves so dearly and where his fetes seem so much brighter and gayer than elsewhere. A little way to the east was a pretty bijou residence decorated in the French renaissance style, and surrounded by a garden that was full of flowers.
