Ebook Twenty Years in Paris

Although, in the writing of it, this book has grown to bulk which much surpasses that which was proposed at the outset, and although at all times what precept was kept in mind by which the severe Boileau proclaims it the great art of authorship to leave certain things unsaid, I am yet conscious as I read its pages over again that many people have been left unnamed who ought to have been named, and that many things have not been told which ought to have been told. I begin now to understand why it is that the writers of memoirs usually require several volumes for their narratives, and I can appreciate the truth of those words of the poet Baudelaire which Alphonse Daudet used often to quote in my hearing, "J'ai plus de souvenirs que si j'avais mille ans."

The purpose of this explanatory note is to pay a collective tribute to those still living and to the memory of those who are dead, whose names are not recorded in friendship in these pages. To have written about all the distinguished people who by the privilege of their companionship and the graciousness of their hospitality have embellished the twenty years of my life in Paris would indeed have necessitated a record of many volumes.