This reduced Mr.
Luce, her worthy husband, a tall, lean, grizzled, well-brushed
gentleman who wore a gold eye-glass and carried his hat a little too
much on the back of his head, to mere platonic praise of the
"distractions" of Paris- they were his great word- since you would
never have guessed from what cares he escaped to them. One of them was
that he went every day to the American banker's, where he found a
post-office that was almost as sociable and colloquial an
institution as in an American country town. He passed an hour (in fine
weather) in a chair in the Champs Elysees, and he dined uncommonly
well at his own table, seated above a waxed floor which it was Mrs.
Luce's happiness to believe had a finer polish than any other in the
French capital. Occasionally he dined with a friend or two at the Cafe
Anglais, where his talent for ordering a dinner was a source of
felicity to his companions and an object of admiration even to the
headwaiter of the establishment. These were his only known pastimes,
but they had beguiled his hours for upwards of half a century, and
they doubtless justified his frequent declaration that there was no
place like Paris.
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