Charles E. Stowe, Harriet Beecher Stowe compiled from her letters and journals by her son Charles Edward Stowe

[241] little things to come and stand around me, and talked with them a few minutes, and this was all the speaking that fell to my share.

To-morrow we go — go to quiet, to obscurity, to peace — to Paris, to Switzerland; there we shall find the loveliest glen, and, as the Bible says, “fall on sleep.”

Paris, June 4.

Here we are in Paris, in a most charming family. I have been out all the morning exploring shops, streets, boulevards, and seeing and hearing life in Paris. When one has a pleasant home and friends to return to, this gay, bustling, vivacious, graceful city is one of the most charming things in the world; and we have a most charming home.

I wish the children could see these Tuileries with their statues and fountains, men, women, and children seated in family groups under the trees, chatting, reading aloud, working muslin,--children driving hoop, playing ball, all alive and chattering French. Such fresh, pretty girls as are in the shops here! Je suis rave, as they say. In short I am decidedly in a French humor, and am taking things quite couleur de rose.

Monday, June 13

We went this morning to the studio of M. Belloc, who is to paint my portrait. The first question which he proposed, with a genuine French air, was the question of “pose” or position. It was concluded that, as other pictures had taken me looking at the spectator, this should take me looking away. M. Belloc remarked that M. Charpentier said I appeared always with the air of an observer,--was always looking around on everything. Hence M. Belloc would take me “en observatrice, mais pas en curieuse,”-with