The Autobiography of an Idea by Louis H. Sullivan

After a brief stay at the Hotel St. Honoré, Louis found permanent quarters on the seventh floor of a rooming hotel, at the southeast corner Rue Monsieur le Prince and Rue Racine, in the Latin Quarter. Nearby were the "Boule Miche" toward the east, the Odeon, the Luxembourg Palace and its gardens to the southwest. From this lofty perch which he always reached on the run, two steps at a time, the City of Paris spread before him to the north, and on the small balcony, reached by casement doors, he would sometimes sit in the twilight and be caught by the solitary boom of the great bell of Notre Dame.

Early he had discovered that the French of his High School, for excellence in which he had taken first prize in a matter of course way, was not quite the colloquial French he now heard, spoken with exasperating rapidity and elision. As to the bill of fare, the menu, at the first attempt he perspired awhile in anguish, then put his finger on a line at random, and set down the result in a special notebook. He must learn current French in a hurry. He engaged a teacher to come every day at a fixed hour. When on the streets, he walked close to the people ahead, to catch every word; in this way his ear caught up words, locutions, intonations, and emphasis; and soon he began to feel he was on the way, even though he did not understand a tenth of what he heard.