Americans in Paris: Mark Twain

In a little while we were speeding through the streets of Paris, and delightfully recognizing certain names and places with which books had long ago made us familiar...When we passed by the Column of July we needed no one to tell us what it was, or to remind us that on its site once stood the grim Bastile, that grave of human hopes and happiness, that dismal prison house within whose dungeons so many young faces put on the wrinkles of age, so many proud spirits grew humble, so many brave hearts broke.




From The Innocents Abroad in Americans in Paris: A Literary Anthology, Adam Gopnik,editor (New York: The Library of America, 2004), p.111.