The scene is Paris, the Imperial Paris, but not a quarter that is fashionable, wealthy, or much frequented by the tourist. It is the wild, slovenly, buoyant quarter of the Paris of the left bank, known as _le Pays Latin_--the Land of Latin. The quarter of frolic and genius, of vaulting ambition and limp money-bags, of generosity and meanness, of truth and hypocrisy; the quarter which supplies the France of the future with its mighty thinkers, the France of the passing with the forlorn hopes of its revolutions, the world--and the _demi monde_ too--very often with its most brilliant and erratic meteors. The time is the spring of 1866. The chestnut-tree, called the Twentieth of March, in the C…
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