You would have said that American civilization expressed itself to his sense in a tissue of capital jokes. The jokes were certainly excellent, and the young man's merriment was joyous and genial. He possessed what is called the pictorial sense; and this first glimpse of democratic manners stirred the same sort of attention that he would have given to the movements of a lively young person with a bright complexion.
Such attention would have been demonstrative and complimentary; and in the present case Felix might have passed for an undispirited young exile revisiting the haunts of his childhood. He kept looking at the violent blue of the sky, at the scintillating air, at the scattered and multiplied patches of color.
"Comme c'est bariole, eh?" he said to his sister in that foreign tongue which they both appeared to feel a mysterious prompting occasionally to use.
"Yes, it is bariole indeed," the Baroness answered.
"I don't like the coloring; it hurts my eyes."
"It shows how extremes meet," the young man rejoined.
"Instead of coming to the West we seem to have gone to the East.
The way the sky touches the house-tops is just like Cairo; and the red and blue sign-boards patched over the face of everything remind one of Mahometan decorations."
"The young women are not Mahometan," said his companion.
"They can't be said to hide their faces. I never saw anything so bold."