Rollo in Paris Part 16

"I could do it, I verily believe," said Rollo. "I should like to try. I mean to go and ask my father if I may."

So Rollo went to the carriage to state the case to his father, and ask his permission to see if he could not pitch the disks so as to cover one of the plates on the board. His father hesitated.

"So far as trying the experiment is concerned," said Mr. Holiday, "as a matter of dexterity and skill, there is no harm; but so far as the hope of getting a prize by it is concerned, it is of the nature of gaming."

"I should think it was more of the nature of a reward for merit and excellence," said Mr. George.

"No," said Mr. Holiday; "for in one or two trials made by chance pa.s.sengers coming along to such a place, the result must depend much more on chance than on adroitness or skill.

"I will tell you what you may do, Rollo," continued Mr. Holiday. "You may pay the man the two sous and try the experiment, provided you determine beforehand not to take any prize if you succeed. Then you will pay your money simply for the use of his apparatus, to amuse yourself with a gymnastic performance, and not stake it in hope of a prize."

"Well," said Rollo, "that is all I want." And off he ran.

"It seems to me that that is a very nice distinction that you made,"

said Mr. George, as soon as Rollo had gone, "and that those two things are very near the line."

"Yes," replied Mr. Holiday, "it is a nice distinction, but it is a very true one. The two things are very near the line; but then, one of them is clearly on one side, and the other on the other. For a boy to pay for the use of such an apparatus for the purpose of trying his eye and his hand is clearly right; but to stake his money in hopes of winning a prize is wrong, for it is gaming. It is gaming, it is true, in this case, on an exceedingly small scale. Still it is gaming, and so is the beginning of a road which has a very dreadful end. Is not it so?"

"Yes," said Mr. George, "I think it is."

As might have been expected, Rollo did not succeed in covering one of the disks. The disks that he threw spread all over the board. The money that he paid was, however, well spent, for he had much more than two sous' worth of satisfaction in making the experiment.

Rollo found a great many other things to interest him in the various stalls and stands that he visited; but at length he got tired of them all, and, coming back to the carriage, told his father that he was ready to go home.

"Very well," said his father. "I don't know but that your uncle George and I are ready, too, though we have not quite got through with our papers. But we can finish them at home."

So Rollo and Carlos got into the carriage, and all the party went home to dinner.

CHAPTER X.

ROLLO'S NARRATIVE.

One evening, when Rollo had been making a long excursion during the day with his uncle George, and had dined with him, at the close of it, at a restaurant's in the Boulevards, he went home about eight o'clock to the hotel to see his father and mother and Jennie, and tell them where he had been. He found his mother in her room putting on her bonnet. She said she was going to take a ride along the Boulevards with a gentleman and lady who were going to call for her.

"And where is father?" said Rollo.

"He has gone to bed, and is asleep by this time. You must be careful not to disturb him."

"And Jennie?" asked Rollo.

"She has gone to bed, too," said his mother; "but she is not asleep, and I presume she will be very glad to see you. You can go in her room."

"Well, I will," said Rollo. "But, mother, I should like to go and ride with you. Will there be room for me?"

"Yes," said his mother. "There will be room, I suppose, in the carriage; but it would not be proper for me to take you, for I am going on an invitation from others. The invitation was to me alone, and I have no right to extend it to any body else.

"But this you can do, if you please," continued his mother. "You can take our carriage, and let Alfred drive you, and so follow along after our party. Only in that case you would not have any company. You would be in a carriage alone."

"Never mind that," said Rollo. "I should like that. I would put the top back, and then I could see all around. I should have a grand ride. I'll go. I wish Jennie had not gone to bed; she could have gone with me."

"No," replied his mother; "Jennie is not well to-night. She has got cold, and she went to bed early on that account. But she will be very glad to have you go and see her."

So Rollo went into Jennie's room. As soon as he opened the door, Jennie pushed aside the curtains, and said,--

"Ah, Rollo, is that you? I am very glad that you have come."

"I can't stay but a little while," said Rollo. "I am going to take a ride with mother."

"Are you going with mother?" asked Jennie.

"Not in the carriage with her," replied Rollo; "but I am going in the same party. I am going to have a carriage all to myself."

"O, no, Rollo," said Jennie, in a beseeching tone. "Don't go away. Stay here with me, please. I am all alone, and have not any body to amuse me."

"But you will go to sleep pretty soon," said Rollo.

"No," replied Jennie; "I am not sleepy the least in the world. See."

Here Jennie opened her eyes very wide, and looked Rollo full in the face, by way of demonstrating that she was not sleepy.

Rollo felt very much perplexed. When he pictured to himself, in imagination, the idea of being whirled rapidly through the Boulevards, on such a pleasant summer evening, in a carriage which he should have all to himself, with the top down so that he could see every thing all around him, and of the brilliant windows of the shops, the mult.i.tudes of ladies and gentlemen taking their coffee at the little round tables on the sidewalk in front of the coffee saloons, the crowds of people coming and going, and the hors.e.m.e.n and carriages thronging the streets, the view was so enchanting that it was very hard for him to give up the promised pleasure. He, however, determined to do it; so he said,--

"Well, Jennie, I'll stay. I will go out and tell mother that I am not going to ride, and then I will come back."

For the first half hour after Mrs. Holiday went away, Rollo was occupied with Jennie in looking over some very pretty French picture books which Mrs. Holiday had bought for her that day, to amuse her because she was sick. Jennie had looked them all over before; but now that Rollo had come, it gave her pleasure to look them over again, and talk about them with him. Jennie sat up in the bed, leaning back against the pillows and bolsters, and Rollo sat in a large and very comfortable arm chair, which he had brought up for this purpose to the bedside. The books lay on a monstrous square pillow of down, half as large as the bed itself, which, according to the French fas.h.i.+on, is always placed on the top of the bed.

Rollo and Jennie would take the books, one at a time, and look them over, talking about the pictures, and showing the prettiest ones to each other. Thus the time pa.s.sed very pleasantly. At length, however, Jennie, having looked over all the books, drew herself down into the bed, and began to ask Rollo where he had been that day.

"I have been with uncle George," said Rollo. "He said that he was going about to see a great many different places, and that I might go with him if I chose, though he supposed that most of them were places that I should not care to see. But I did. I liked to see them all."

"What places did you go to?" asked Jennie.

"Why, first we went to see the workshops. I did not know before that there were so many. Uncle George says that Paris is one of the greatest manufacturing places in the world; only they make things by hand, in private shops, and not in great manufactories, by machinery. Uncle George says there must be as much as eight or ten square miles of these shops in Paris. They are piled up to six or eight stories high. Some of the streets look like ranges of chalky cliffs facing each other, such as we see at some places on the sea sh.o.r.e."

"What do they make in the shops?" asked Jennie.

"O, all sorts of curious and beautiful things. They have specimens of the things that they make up, put up, like pictures in a frame, in little gla.s.s cases, on the wall next the street. We walked along through several streets and looked at these specimens. There were purses, and fringes, and watches, and gold and silver chains, and beautiful portemonnaies, and clocks, and jewelry of all kinds, and ribbons, and opera gla.s.ses, and dressing cases, and every thing you can think of."

"Yes," said Jennie, "I have seen all such things in the shop windows in the Palais Royal and in the Boulevards."

"Ah, those are the shops where they sell the things," said Rollo; "but these shops that uncle George and I went to see are where they make them. We went to one place where they were making artificial flowers, and such beautiful things you never saw. The rooms were full of girls, all making artificial flowers."

"Why did not you bring me home some of them?" asked Jennie.

"Why--I don't know," replied Rollo. "I did not think to ask if I could buy any of them.