the patrician dimensions of the edifice; the light nickered at every gust.  Ascending, I pulled a cordon bleu, and was admitted into the apartment.  It consisted of four places or rooms, the furniture of which was in the neatest French style, both of wood and tapestry; but the fireplace was narrow, and so ill-constructed that while the heat ascended the chimney the smoke entered the room.  A nurse, with one of those keen, self-possessed faces and that efficient manner so often encountered in Paris, ushered me to the invalid’s presence.  He was a fair specimen of a philosophic bachelor inured to the life of the French metropolis; everything about him was in good taste, from the model of the lamp to the cover of the arm-chair; and yet an indescribable cheerlessness pervaded his elegant lodging.  The last play of Scribe, the day’s Journal des Debats, a bouquet, and a Bohemian glass, were on the marble table at his side.  His languid eye brightened and his feverish hand tightened convulsively over mine; years had elapsed since he left our native town; he had drunk of the cup of pleasure, and cultivated the resources of literature and science in this their great centre; but now, in the hour of physical weakness, the yearning for domestic and home scenes filled his heart; and his mind reacted from the blandishments of a luxurious materialism and a refined egotism of life.  It was like falling back upon the normal conditions of existence thus to behold the ‘ills that flesh is heir to’ in the midst of a city where such rich outward provision for human activity and enjoyment fills the senses.  Excessive civilization has its morbid tendencies, and great refinement in one direction is paralleled by an equal degree of savagery in another.  There is in absolute relation between the facilities for pleasure and the frequency of suicide.  Of all places in the world, Paris is the most desolate to an invalid stranger.  The custom of living there in lodgings isolates the visitor; the occupants of the dwelling are not alive to the claims of neighborhood; with his landlord he has only a business and formal connection; thus thrown upon himself, without the nerve or the spirits for external amusement, few situations are more forlorn.  The Parisian French are intensely calculating and selfish; illness and grief are so alien to their tastes that, to the best of their ability, they ignore and abjure them.  As long as health permits, out-of-door life or companionship solaces that within; the stranger may be enchanted; but when confined to his apartment and dependent on chance visitors or hireling services, he longs for a land where domestic life and household comfort are better cultivated and understood.