"Boc ou demi?" asked the waiter.
Herbert and I and the Scholar from Oxford were lunching together in the Quarter. The Bibliothèque was closed for cleaning, so it was an off day.
Herbert and the Scholar asked forbocs, and I thinking to be modest chose ademi. My eyes nearly dropped out of my head when the men got glasses of beer and before me stood a formidable mug that held a pint. Emilie told me afterwards that if I wanted that much beer again the waiter would understand better if I ordered "un sérieux."
The Scholar from Oxford had the habit of living in our apartment when he came to Paris. Memories of hospitality on the part of himself and his wife when we were on our honeymoon in Oxford were fresh, and when the time came for the Scholar's next look at manuscripts in the Bibliothèque Nationale, there was no question in our mind—nor in his, for that matter—as to where he should stay. We set up a folding-bed in the dining-room and tucked him in. No matter if we did not come back to the Rue Servandoni at meal time. If we did not want to bother getting up a meal, we put the apartment key into our pocket and sallied forth on what we called a baby-carriage promenade. There was always some little place where we could eat when we got hungry. Once we dined in acrémerie chaudefor no better reason than the attraction of a diverting sign on the window—Five o'clock à toute heure.
To-day we had decided against Brogart's, our usual haunt, on the rue de Rivoli. At Brogart's you could lunch for Fr. 1.25 with theplat du jourand a satisfying range of choice in the fixings that went with it. It was 1.20 if you invested in tickets. Then you were given a napkin-ring to mark your serviette, and a numbered hole in the open-face cupboard screwed to the wall beside the high desk where Madame sat while she raked in the money and kept a sharp eye on her clients. There was a division of opinion between Mother and me during a flying visit she made us just before Christmas. We took her to Brogart's. She saw a fellow, some kind of a wop with a greasy face and long hair, pick his teeth with a fork. She never went back to Brogart's again. They don't do that in Philadelphia. At least if they do, Mother had never happened to see them. Herbert and Alick and I were less difficult to please. To-day it was only because we had wandered far afield that Brogart's did not see us. We had found a table that pleased us in a restaurant that bore the sign "Au rendez-vous des cochers." We were not looking for a novel experience. We were not tourists, you understand. It was on account of the budget.
Everybody knows that the cochers of Paris are no fools. They can drive a horse, but they can drive a bargain too and afterwards settle down on their high box and fling you shrewd observations about art or politics or what not. But there is more to it than that.When you have lived a while in the Latin quarter you know who are the expert judges of cooking. In the old days, the meal you could buy in a tiny darkrendez-vous des cocherswas as tasty as anything you could enjoy on a Grand Boulevard at ten times the price. Minor details like a table-cloth and clean forks and knives with each new plate are not missed when thegigotis done to a turn and thesauce piquanteis just right. Therendez-vous des cochersrestaurant has one distinct advantage over the swell place on the Boulevards. If you are in a hurry to go to the Concert Rouge and have had no dinner, you can stop for a second at a cab driver's restaurant while you buy a portion offrites. The luscious golden potatoes, sprinkled with salt, are wrapped in a paper, and you consume them as you walk up the Rue de Tournon. They don't mind babies there. Scrappie was asleep in her carriage. Monsier le Patron came out and rolled the carriage ever so gently under the awning beside the glass screen by the restaurant door. He beamed at us benevolently, then stepped over to explain that he was apère de familleand thatcourants d'airinflame babies' eyes.
The Scholar from Oxford is a Scotchman with the Scotch affection for France. Before the war he came to France and Italy every year to make enigmatical notes in his own handwriting reduced to cramped proportions. The notes were placed within columns that were inked out years ago when he began the monumentalwork. The columns are drawn across the short dimension of the paper, so that you have to turn the thing sidewise to read it.
There is a variety of ink. The row of notes at the top is all in the same color. Three quarters of an inch in black mark the first year's hours spent in the Bibliothèque. Run your eye down a space the width of your thumb and the ink changes. Count how many ink colors you see, and you'll know how many times the Scholar from Oxford has come abroad on his grant. He carries his papers in a shiny black oil clothserviette. He was modestly imperturbable when with my usual vehemence I gave him a good scolding because he confessed he had no copy of the precious sheets.
"So worked the old monks in the days of the Reformation," said I, "when a fellow spent his life time laboriously copying the Bible with his own hand."
"Ah," mused the Scotchman with his eyes far away, "they were great scholars, the monks."
"But it was slow," I protested, "often a man did not live long enough to illuminate the device at the end of his chapter. Only a great enthusiasm carried his successors to the end."
"Without them, think what we should have lost!"
"But they worked like that, you stubborn one, because there were no typewriters or secretaries. You cannot persuade me, Alick, that there is any extra virtue in using their methods today. You should adopt modernmethods so that you could accomplish more. You don't seem to realize that thirty years from now the world will call you what you are, Britain's greatest Latin scholar."
Unconvinced that mediaeval methods belong to mediaeval times, the Scholar from Oxford lit another cigarette. He still persists in carrying around Europe, in spite of wars, his priceless record of years of labor. But he has since become Professor of Humanity at a great University. The chair that he holds dates back to the day of the methods to which he remains faithful.
Home again, I was making the coffee. But I was not out of the conversation. Our kitchenette was six feet from the dining-room table. Herbert started to light his cigar.
"Ah, my lad," said the Scholar from Oxford, staying Herbert's hand, "you haven't asked the lady's permission!"
"I guess I can smoke in my dining-room," answered Herbert.
"You have to ask my permission then," laughed Alick, "before you smoke in my bedroom."
Thank heaven, the Bibliothèque Nationale does not make my husband and my guest stupid. If I could not look forward to jolly evenings, I should make war upon research work, much as I like Bibliothèque Nationale.
"CARROTS cost money!"
"Yes, Emilie?"
"I had to throw several sous' worth at your window before you got awake this morning, and when they rolled back some of them fell in the gutter. Old Sempé saw me take them, and I'm sure he'll ask you to pay for them," said Emilie, nodding her round head with its well-oiled straight black hair. Emilie was no more gifted hirsutely than in other feminine adornments. Since the day we found her cleaning our apartment, at the request of the Sempés, I had been studying her carefully to decide whether new clothes and soap would help her appearance. Clean and togged out in some of my things, she was not radically changed. But her heart of gold shone in her eyes, and I was not long in learning to love her.
"You never hear that bell," continued Emilie. "What a conscience you must have to sleep that way. The carrots are cheaper than paying me from eight o'clock when you sleep on."
"Never mind about the carrots," I laughed. "Weneed you for an alarm clock, and we did not wake up until one fell on the bed."
Emilie was my first servant, and I did not have her all the time. All my life I had been demanding things from servants, but I had never bossed one in her housework. I dreaded tackling the problem. Emilie was the easy solution. Thefemme de ménagesystem is one of the advantages of life in Paris. You do not have to house your servant, and she is not in the way in a small apartment when you do not want her there. You can have as much or as little of thefemme de ménageas you like, or (as was more often the case in my first year of Paris housekeeping) as you can afford to pay for. I put Emilie out of the house when the clock showed the number of times forty centimes per hour that I could spare. Forty centimes per hour, did I say? Yes, and that was ten centimes more than others paid in our street. Now it is a franc per hour, and thefemmes de ménageof 1919 growl most of the time and stop work when they want to whether your house-cleaning or laundry is finished or not. Emilie set in deliberately to attach herself to me and accepted all my vagaries. I flatter myself that it was not so much for the extra two sous per hour as for the fact that she liked me. My queer ways interested her. She could never understand why I washed Scrappie's silk-and-wool undershirts myself, but was willing to pay her several francs for sitting on the coal-box readinga newspaper or dozing for hours while I went to the opera.
Emilie was a vaudeville singer and dancer who had lost her figure and most of her teeth before the bi-decennial of her stage career.
"To think, Madame, that a few years ago the posters on theKiosqueat the corner of this street used to announce my number at the music-halls, and to-day I'm down on the floor washing your tiles!"
I was pulling the baby's wool stockings on drying-boards.
"You say you used to be on the stage?" I led on sociably.
"Yes, Madame,comique excentrique. That is why I cannot cook. My profession required me always to eat in restaurants, but I can wash dishes, clean rooms and build fires. Thanks to God, for the service you need, I know how to mind babies. I never had anyone to help me with Marcelle."
Marcelle was a fifteen year old girl, hare-lipped and cross-eyed, but her mother loved her dearly. Emilie did not say who Marcelle's father was. But she was not as reticent as the woman of Samaria, and would have scorned to come to me under false pretenses.Tout savoir est tout pardonner.If you cannot live up to the spirit of that motto, do not plan a life without worry for yourself in Paris.
"Last year, before I found you, Madame, Marcelleand I were out of work. When you came in here in July we had earned only fifty francs in two months. Marcelle did not get her job as laundry apprentice until October. Oh no, we didn't exactly starve. You can get cold-boiled potatoes and they sell bits of bread and left over coffee very cheap at night when the restaurants close."
Here she sat up to wring her floor-rag into the brown water of the pail.
"I hope you'll not regret spoiling me the way you do. You let me talk, but you can trust me not to forget myself. Take this afternoon when those ladies are coming for tea. You know how I wait on the table. That is a rôle. I get my happiness in considering everything a rôle. I play at beingfemme de ménage. These dirty old clothes are my costume: the bucket and mop are stage properties."
"Do you like having company at tea?" I broke in.
"That depends."
"On what?"
"On who they are." Here Emilie made up her mind to speak with firmness. "Now, without indiscretion, Madame, the ladies you asked for this afternoon are not interesting. I was here when two of them called and you told them to come to tea."
"Why not?"
"The Latin Quarter is full of women like that. I know. I have worked for them. I have been cleaningat studios and apartments like yours in this neighborhood ever since I left the stage. I have seen what these women paint. Oh la! la! Sometimes you cannot tell the canvas from the palette, Cubism they call it, to hide the fact that they cannot draw and could not reproduce a figure or any recognizable object to save their lives. No, I'm not talking of beginners. I'm talking about the old ones, the women, Americans and English, who do not know how to paint kitchen chairs or carry a tune, and yet art schools and music academies flourish on their fees. They were misfits where they came from. It pays their relatives to send them money every month so they won't come home. But why should Paris—that is, our part of Paris—be the dumping ground? You say that there are more men of that kind than women? Yes, oh yes, many more. But then, after a certain time men give up posing. They do not mind being taken at their real value. When they are failures, they admit it. The women keep on pretending."
Emilie was as good as her word. With a shining face and hair well slicked back from her ears she appeared at tea time. The ample front was covered by a clean white apron. She stood at my elbow, her black beady eyes keen to see what I needed before I asked for it.Oui, Madameandvoilà, Madamecame as softly as though, born in a pantry, she had always served tea. But she could not keep up the play withoutthe relief of an occasional entr'acte. When she brought me a pot of fresh tea and guests happened to be looking the other way, she would give a broad wink and bolt from the room. When the guests left, the kitchen door was closed.
"I ought to have made one more appearance, Madame," said Emilie a few moments later as she settled herself comfortably in the steamer-chair and took a pinch of snuff. "The model servant would have helped them on with their coats. But I had all I could stand."
"But you did very well, Emilie."
"I got more fun out of it than you did. I said that you were wasting your time on those people. What did they do? Told you you looked badly. Asked why you were so tired. Advised you to get a doctor for the baby's cough. And you think they meant well? That it was solicitude?"
Here Emilie laughed heartily and wiped the snuff off her hands with the greasy blue apron that now replaced the white one.
"You arenaïve, dear Madame. Women love to tease each other that way, especially those who are not well or strong themselves. They hate you for not having ills. If you told them that you had a physical examination last week and the doctor said you were in perfect condition, they would shake their heads gravelyand warn you that you are underweight for your height."
"They did make me mad, I confess, when they volunteered advice about Scrappie. They used to scold me for nursing my baby and they scolded me to-day when they heard I had stopped nursing her."
"That's it! That's it!" cried Emilie. "Next time they talk like that, show them the little thing, beautifulrose de maithat she is, and ask them in what way she looks badly."
Throughout the year at Twenty-One, Emilie was a tower of strength to me. When we sent our pitchpine back to William Shakespeare and packed our rugs and brasses, she was on hand as she had been the day we set up our Lares and Penates in the Rue Servandoni. She urged that we take her to Constantinople with us. We did, and never regretted it—if only for her comments on the Turks and Greeks and Armenians. When she realized that we needed other care than she could give us, Emilie quietly dismissed herself and went back to France to live in Bordeaux. We see her there occasionally. She still wears my old hats and blouses. She is still afemme de ménage. And Marcelle has continued to wield the flat-iron.
IWAS bathing Christine before the fire. Gabry and Esther came in. The two girls settled themselves in steamer chairs.
"We want to know if you will let us come and sleep in your dining-room to-night," asked Esther.
"Sure," I answered, "but, mercy me, the bed in there is a little bit of a narrow one...."
"That doesn't matter," said Gabry.
"No, indeed," agreed Esther. "We can cuddle up close and we shan't be in it very long."
The baby began to howl. I had been listening to the girls and the side of the tub had got hot.
"Poor little dear," said Esther. "Her mother forgot her and she began to parboil."
I had the baby safely on my lap now wrapped in towels. Emilie carried away the bath tub.
"What's going on to-night?" I asked.
"Well, it's a fling," said Esther. "You know how it is up at the Hostel. They are so fussy—you would think it was an old ladies' home. Two boys that came over in our ship have been studying forestry in some German school. They are here for the holidays. Wegot them to promise to take us with them to-night to see the town—café stuff, you know."
"Where are you going?" I asked.
"To a cellar where they do the Apache dance."
"You don't want to see that," I suggested. "It isn't real. Just a plant to catch parties like you. Why Herbert and I saw that stunt done in a cinema the other night. There was a French couple back of us. They giggled over it. The man said, 'Wait a minute. The police are sure to come in after that party of Americans are comfortably settled with some drinks.'"
"You don't mean it," said Esther. "Don't take the edge off our spree."
"I'm not taking off edges. Only in the cinema the other night it was instructive the way the policemen came in. After they had driven out the most murderous dancing Apaches, the Americans thought it was too hot and fled. You ought to have seen the way fake Apaches and barmaids laughed at them afterwards. What is your plan for the night?"
"First to dinner in some spicy café, then the theatre. We're going to seeChantecler. Everybody's crazy about it."
"Excepting people who think it is silly," put in Gabry.
"Well, if it's silly to see actors dressed up in peacock feathers," cried Esther, "we'll have a good time. And there'll be supper somewhere afterwards."
"Going to make a regular night of it, aren't you?"
"That's just the point. Helen, you're a dear to be so sympathetic. Up at the student Hostel...."
"Did they object there to your going?"
"They don't know a thing about it. It would never do to tell them."
"Why?"
"They'd begin to preach," protested Esther. "A pack of school teachers anyway. That's why we want to spend the night here. We'll just explain, you understand, that we're going to spend the night with their dear lovely Mrs. Gibbons. And they'll never know a thing about the fun."
The girls were moving towards the door.
"The boys will come here to get us," called Esther. "We'll come down about half-past six. Herbert won't mind, will he?"
"We must move along now," said Gabry. "I have a singing lesson."
"And I have a fitting at the dressmaker's," added Esther. "Ta, ta, Helen."
I felt in my bones that I didn't quite know what to do about it and would wait until Herbert came home.
When Herbert returned from the Bibliothèque Nationale at noon, I told him about my visitors.
"Why on earth—" he began to comment.
"Oh, they are going to do the Grand Boulevards witha couple of young American fellows who are in Paris for a vacation," I said.
"What's the matter with those girls," exclaimed Herbert. "What's gotten into their heads? Do they think they can come here and start off on an expedition like that? If they were older, it would be different. If they're afraid to tell the Hostel people, it shows they know well enough it isn't just the thing for them to do."
"I thought so myself."
"Well, why didn't you right up and say it from the beginning?"
"Girls wouldn't take it from me. My game was to be absorbent and get the whole story. They're nearly as old as I am. I couldn't dictate to them. I don't know how to get out of it."
"I see," mused Herbert.
The girls came in about six o'clock to dress for dinner. They had their suitcases and some flowers, and Esther brought her light blue hat in a paper bundle. I had told them to telephone their boys to come to dinner with us before starting out for the theater. This was the only way I could think of to manage things so that Herbert could see them before they started away.
Esther put on the pretty bright blue dress she had bought at the model shop to go with the light blue hat. She placed the hat, still in its paper cover, on the topof the wardrobe in the dining-room. Gabry played with Scrappie, sitting on the floor beside her, where she was tied in her papa's steamer chair. Esther perched herself on the stool in the kitchen and watched me frying sausages. Herbert came in after a bit and wheeled right around from the front door into the kitchen. He didn't have to walk. It wasn't far enough.
"Hello, Esther, what are you up to?" said Herbert.
"Hello, Herb."
"Come on in the other room. I want to talk to you," said Herbert.
He closed the door and I heard them talking hard.
"Gee!" said Gabry. "Esther sounds mad, doesn't she?"
"Herbert's telling her what he thinks of the party," I said.
"He doesn't want us to go, does he?" said Gabry.
"Oh, he's not breaking up the party. Not a bit of it. He only says that seeing nobody of your crowd knows French and seeing that your mother made us promise to look after you, he wants to know what café and theatre you're going to."
Just as a rather mad-looking Esther and a smiling Herbert appeared, there was a ring at the bell, and in came the boys, two rosy-cheeked American youngsters. They came into the kitchen to talk to me a moment, and then Herbert took them into the dining-room toexplain things. I heard him talking with them, nice American chaps they were, not looking for trouble a bit. Not the type out for the booze, just bright youngsters who were going on the boulevards out of curiosity.
We lighted up the candles in the bedroom-study. Herbert put some new ones in the candlesticks on the piano and we soon got things going. One of the boys was taken into the bedroom-study to play a tune on the piano, and soon Esther cheered up with a face more or less of an April one.
"Hello, boys," said Herbert. "The girls have been telling us—Mrs. Gibbons and I want you to have dinner with us here first so we can talk over the party."
"Sure," said John. "We have tickets forChantecler."
We sat down and tackledcoquilles Saint-Jacques.
"You don't want to get in any trouble over this game," Herbert went on. "Not speaking French and all that...."
"That's so, too," said Joe.
"Chantecleris fine and dandy," said Herbert. "If you want supper afterwards, here's the address of a nice little café."
"Sunday school picnic," moaned Esther.
"Esther's inconsolable. She thinks I'm spoiling the fun. But these boys don't want to get into a doubtful little hole. You don't know what you're doing, Esther," said Herbert.
"I'm as old as your wife, so there."
"You fellows do not want to spend a terrible lot of money. I know you don't. Esther is mad as a hornet at me because I am going to squelch her idea of going to Montmartre or Les Halles for a hot old time. I don't want to seem a poor sport, but you know some of those cafés are fakes, others are what I shall not mention, and there is a third category of really dangerous ones. The entire business is carried on to catch and mulct tourists. If you happen to drift into the fake places, nothing more serious would happen than getting stuck good and hard. You would simply have to pay the waiter whatever was on the bill. If you were considerably older and knew how to speak French, the slumming might prove interesting—for one evening. But for you the game is not worth the candle. I don't mind your going for a jaunt along the boulevards, and I can tell you some of the cafés that are all right. But as for Les Halles—that doesn't go."
The boys were sensible. They fell in with our suggestions without discussion. After dinner the four went off to their show. Next morning I heard Esther telling Scrappie all about it.
"The W.C.T.U. wasn't in it, baby.Chanteclerwas written to please kids of your age. There was nobody in that Y.M.C.A. café your daddy sent us to. My blue hat was the most conspicuous object in the place. We didn't see a thing. Notypes, no wickedness,no models, more than we ordinarily see around the Quarter."
Gabry's eyeglasses were shaking on her nose.
"Tell her what Monsieur Sempé said," urged Gabry.
"Yes, baby," said Esther, who was laughing in spite of herself now. "Our mama boys wanted to be polite in the American way last night. They brought us here and didn't want to leave us until they saw us inside your saintly doors. But Monsieur Sempé stopped them down at the street door. He simply yelled at the boys, 'Ça ne se fait pas à Paris, Messieurs.'
"No," concluded Esther, "from start to finish, baby, there was nothing about our party that would have hurt your lily-white soul."
IWAS nursing Scrappie. Herbert came into the bedroom and started to speak slowly as if he wasn't sure how I would take what he was going to say.
"Fellow out here who is hungry. What shall I do?"
"Feed him," said I. Herbert did not have to tell me that he had no money to give the man to buy a meal. "Couldn't you ask him to dinner if he is all right?"
"Well, he is sort of an old chap," said Herbert doubtfully.
I lighted a candle and put it on the end of the mantel-piece nearest to the baby's bed. She was perfectly contented to go to sleep alone if she could watch a candle flicker.
When I had settled Scrappie and opened the window and closed the door gently, I went into the dining-room and found Mr. Thompson. Sparse grey hair, watery blue eyes, a talkative individual who hoped he was not bothering us too much. He wore a frock coat with shiny revers. His cuffs were unstarched and frayed, but they were clean. Herbert had brought in some cold boiled potatoes. In those days you bought themcooked at thecharcuteriefor the same price that you got them raw at the greengrocer's. It was a good scheme. You could peel them and slice them in a jiffy,—then warm them with eggs broken up and scrambled in the pan beside them. This with cheese and nuts and liqueurs made a meal without using too much gas. You did it yourself, using no more energy than would be taken out of you if it had been done by a cook.
Mr. Thompson did not lie when he told Herbert he was hungry. He had three helpings of everything. He said little during the meal, but he did not eat with his knife. When it came to cigars, he pushed back his chair and spread out his hands to thebouletfire. Casting his eye from the molding to the floor, he included the dining-room and all the rest of the apartment with a sweeping gesture and a couple of "Ha-Has."
"From the looks of this joint, you two youngsters haven't any more money than you need. This is a good joke on me, too good a joke to keep to myself. You have given me a square deal along with a square meal, and I appreciate it. I have lived for years in this Quarter and have earned precious little money. Sort of a down-and-outer. I am, I suppose, one of the Quarter's charity patients. Don't worry. I am not going to beg of you. First time I came to Paris, it was by way of England. I stayed a long time in Oxford and made friends with the Cowley Fathers. Then Iburied myself in the Bibliothèque Nationale, for I was starting a thesis in church history."
"Indeed," cried Herbert. "I have a fellowship in Church History myself. What is your subject?"
"Religious orders after the Reformation," said Mr. Thompson.
"Have you published anything?" asked my husband.
"No," said Mr. Thompson. "Queer thing life is. We get loose from our moorings when we least expect it. You won't believe me, but American generosity was my undoing!"
"How could that be?" I put in.
"Don't you know," said Mr. Thompson, "that we are not as much the captain of our souls as we like to think?"
He was in a steamer chair now, and lying back, he blew smoke at the ceiling.
"But you were saying, Mr. Thompson," said I.
"I was saying more than I ought to," he mused.
He had forgotten his cigar. Herbert twisted a bit of newspaper, touched it to the glowingbouletsand held it out to Mr. Thompson. Matches are expensive in France.
"Oh!" he started. "I was away back years ago. Thank you. I was wrong a minute ago when I told you I had said too much. I have said too little. You have made me feel at home, and I shall be frank with you. It sometimes wrecks a fellow's careerif he receives just a little too much help. What I am talking about is quite a different thing from what I may have suggested just now. Not a person spoiled with too much money. But I was spoiled by the fact that at a certain time, I was able to put my hands on ever so little money when it was not good for me. Not the money itself, you understand, but the fact that the game is so easy."
"But I don't understand," I protested.
"Of course you don't," said Mr. Thompson.
He threw the butt of his cigar on the floor, put his foot on it, and took another from Herbert's box.
"Sorry I haven't better cigars to give you," said my husband. "Thesecarrés à deux sousjust suit my speed."
Alas for thecarrés à deux sous! Of them as of many of our joys we must say Ichabod.
"The time came when I ran out of money—but altogether out of money, you understand. I waited until I was pretty hungry before I told anybody. Then the American Consul did something for me. Somebody gave me a pair of shoes. Other persons gave me money, and the day was saved. Again I became absorbed in my work, to be interrupted by poverty. This time I went to the pastor of the American Church. He looked me over. Must have thought I was a good case, as he saw to it that several people did something for me. After all, it comes easily, and I have lived like thatfor years. Sometimes my clothes don't fit very well, but what is the difference. It has grown upon me until I am utterly unfit to earn my living. You get nothing twice from the Consulate, and churches are not good for much. Besides, the churches keep a list of dead-beats. It is the individual Americans one meets that give away their money carelessly. I found somebody who listened sympathetically to my hard-luck story. The story itself was no lie the first time. But it was so easy—there was the temptation. I tell you frankly that I fell. I discovered that I could do it again when the hard-luck story was not true."
"I hunted you up," continued Mr. Thompson, "with the idea of getting something out of you. I suppose if I put as much energy into holding down a job as I do this, I could earn my living. But the habit of living on the kindness of other people has me in its grip, and I do not stick to work when it is given to me. I have been pretty faithful to the Bibliothèque all these years, for it is heated there. I can read my paper, write some letters and study a little on my church history. The thesis is growing slowly, but that is all I can say I have done these twelve years.
"There are other people who do the same thing, you know. You have met them without knowing it. Artist fellows, youngsters as well as old ones, understand the game. Do you know how they work it? It is known now, for instance, that you receive informallyevery Wednesday. There are other days and hosts of women. So it goes. A fellow can get along very cheaply like that. Pay thirty or forty francs a month for a place to live and work, two sous each morning forcafé au laitpassed across the zinc—good coffee too, as you perhaps know. They let you bring your roll with you if you like. It will cost a sou. One roll and a cup of coffee is enough after you get used to it. Your only large expense is the noon meal.
"Generally the evening meal you can pick up. You find in the social register the names of all the ladies, kind and unobservant, who have days at home. You stick a big paper on your wall and mark it off in seven columns, one for each day of the week. You make a list of the women who have receiving days, and you drop in somewhere every afternoon about five-thirty. The tea party is pretty well finished, but there is usually plenty of food left. The ladies have to provide for more than really come. You do that yourself, Mrs. Gibbons. The ladies do not notice that you eat more than one or two sandwiches and plenty of cake. If they do notice it, it makes them feel happy, and there is your supper. If you do it systematically with a list like mine, you do not have to go to Mrs. X's house more than twice in the winter. A lot of people in the American colony have receiving days. It is easy enough to know them. All of the boys know a few, and we take each other around. The artist fellows have a cinch.All they have to do, if they have a conscience, is to present the hostesses to whom they are the most indebted, with a couple of worthless sketches. Nobody ever suspects anything.
"You can slide in and out in the Latin Quarter and meet any number of charming people. They never stay too long and there are always new ones coming in. No hostess is superior to the flattery implied when her tea is appreciated. I have learned to praise sandwiches so that I can get a fair supply. I write an article occasionally, and that covers my rent. Clothes are an easy matter. Any number of people in Paris will give away clothes. You see I am a deadbeat. I was a deadbeat to-day when I saw in theHeraldthat Mrs. Gibbons was going to be at home this afternoon."
Mr. Thompson got up to go.
"Where did you put your overcoat?" asked Herbert.
"I have none," said my guest.
Herbert's eyes met mine. I telegraphed "Yes."
Certainly we gave Herbert's old overcoat to Mr. Thompson. As we talked about it afterwards, Herbert observed,
"We could not help giving him the coat, could we?"
"No, of course not."
We never saw Mr. Thompson again. It isn't in the picture. Driftwood!
THE best fun of having a home is sharing it with your friends. But you deprive yourself of this fun—in a very large measure, at least—if you make entertaining a burden or a great expense. In the Rue Servandoni we tried out theories about hospitality that have become firmly rooted family principles. Guests arealwayswelcome, and we never feed them better than we feed ourselves. Company is the rule: not the exception. I suppose my Irish temperament made this possible in the beginning. Now we would not give up our way of living for anything in the world. By the standards of my own family I am not regarded as a good housekeeper. I am finicky only about cleanliness and the quality and quantity of food. The rest doesn't matter. That is, I have no almanac to show me when to put away the winter clothes and when to do Spring house-cleaning. I do not get "all out of kelter" if the wash is done on Thursday instead of Monday: and I never "put up" fruit or bake. I buy my preserves from the grocer and my bread and cake from the baker.
When I look back on Rue Servandoni days and try to analyze my attitude towards housekeeping, I thinkfirst that I may have been demoralized by living through the Armenian massacres just before going to Paris. It was enough to make me happy in the morning to realize that my husband and baby were alive. Did I have a new sense of values, born of suffering? Or perhaps it wasn't anything as high-brow or pious as that. Perhaps it was the inheritance of shiftlessness that came down to me from the ancient Irish kings. This curious form of original sin persists and makes me able to agree with one who sang when things all got messed up,
"The cow's in the hammock,The baby's in the lake,The cat's in the garbage:WHATdifference does it make?"
"The cow's in the hammock,The baby's in the lake,The cat's in the garbage:WHATdifference does it make?"
Now I do not claim that my way is altogether right and that my maternal Pennsylvania Dutch strain does not occasionally assert itself, though feebly. I enjoy formal and well-ordered entertaining when it is not a pretense—when I do not have the uncomfortable feeling that my hostess has worn herself out getting the meal ready or is offering a meal beyond her income.
The alternative in the Rue Servandoni was to have friends take us as we were or to make an occasional splurge. The latter was thoroughly distasteful to us both. We held that what was good enough for ourselves was good enough for our friends, and that they would rather come to our simple meals than not comeat all. How could we hope to compete with the Café de Paris or Arménonville? And we knew that many who came to us paid their cook more than our total income.
Where stood the walls of old LutetiaWhere stood the walls of old Lutetia
Is not the question of entertaining a good deal like the question of other people's wealth? If you are continually striving to keep up with friends richer than you, you are bound to feel poor. We could put our heads out of our window, and pity ourselves because we were not living in steam-heated, electric-lighted Number Nineteen or Number Twenty-Three. But then, across the street, Number Twenty and Number Eighteen hadlogementsbeside which our apartment was a palace.
Shortly after setting up our Lares and Penates in Number Twenty-One, a friend from Denver dropped in just before supper. He was a judge and silver-mine owner, the father of one of my Bryn Mawr college-mates. I urged him to stay. He was excusing himself, when I volunteered the information that our supper consisted of cornmeal mush with milk, and that was all. He stayed, and told us that it was the best meal he had eaten in Paris. "I just love cornmeal mush, and I cannot get it at my hotel," he said. We believed him. He spoke the truth.
There was always room at our table for friends. An extra plate, and a little more of what we were having for ourselves—that was all there was to it. In a bigcity, especially a city like Paris where shops are in every street, getting more food quickly is no problem. Herbert would just slip downstairs to Sempé's for eggs, another chop, another can of peas, an additional bottle of wine. Next door was the bakery.
The best friends of our married life have come to us through unpretentious entertaining. The contact of the home is different from the contact of the office or club or formal gathering, and it has enabled me to take every step forward with my husband. Our broadened vision, our intimate sources of information, the steps upward in our profession are largely the result of the dinner-table and the after-dinner smoke before the fire. One illustration shows how chance influences the whole life.
Early in the autumn of 1909, we received a letter from a Paris lawyer who had just returned from settling insurance claims in massacre-stricken Cilicia. He had been in Tarsus just after we left, and wanted to meet us. I wrote back to him, as I would have done to anyone with an introduction like his, "Come to dinner, and if there is a Mrs. K. bring her with you." He sought us out in our little street. There was no Mrs. K., but the spontaneity of the invitation and its inclusiveness had prompted him to break his rule of not accepting dinner invitations. He was a charming man, full of information and inspiration. When I brought on the asparagus, he said that in Poland they put burntbread crumbs into drawn-butter sauce. I jumped right up, and exclaimed, "Nothing easier! We shall haveasperges à la polonaiseright away." In three minutes the asparagus was to his taste. The lawyer thought out, and made a suggestion that would certainly never have occurred to him had I arranged a formal meeting in response to his letter. He told us that the experience we had in Turkey we should not regard as accidental. "Why did the massacres occur? You must have asked yourselves that. Now drop your research into Gallicanism and French ecclesiastical history. A thousand men are as well equipped for that as you. Turn your attention to the Turks and the Eastern Question, and from that go into the study of the contemporary diplomacy of Europe. The Russian and Hapsburg Empires are built upon the Ottoman Empire. Study the relation of Turkey to Poland. This is the field for you!"
In the last few years I have often thought of that evening. We followed the lawyer's advice. He helped us. He encouraged us. He used to come to dinner every Tuesday night. We went back to Turkey and came again to Paris before the Great War. During the years of absence, there had been frequent correspondence. When we returned, the Tuesday evenings were resumed. If my husband was ready for the work that came to him with the war, it is thanks to the Paris lawyer.The Foundation of the OttomanEmpire,The New Map of Europe,The Reconstruction of Poland and the Near East, are the outcome of table-talks with the lawyer that began in the Rue Servandoni.
In thepensionof the Rue Madame we met people whom we invited to come to see us in the Rue Servandoni. We asked them to our table. They came. And they have been dinner guests in our different Paris homes during the past decade.
There was the Catholic Archbishop of Cairo, an Arab who had the story-telling gift of his race. You do not know what it is to hear a story told until you have listened to an Arab. The Archbishop unfolded to us the lore of the East. There must have been something aboutles petits américainsthat interested him, for our meals could not compete with Mademoiselle Guyenot's. He used to sit in the steamer-chair, with his arms folded over his gold crucifix, his cape thrown back on both shoulders (which gave a dash of red), the end of a long white beard rubbing the most prominent buttons of his cassock front, and eyes twinkling in unpriestly fashion. He was the reincarnation of Nasreddin Hodja, prince of Anatolian story-tellers. Herbert pokes in his bath. One night, when Scrappie went to sleep earlier than usual, Herbert started to make his ablutions before the dining-room fire while I was busy in the kitchen. The door-bell rang. In came the archbishop. There was a swift change of persons and rooms. Herbert finished his bath in the kitchen in an incredibly short time. Hedid not want to miss a moment of the archbishop.
Michi Kawai was with me in school as well as in college. Imagine my delight at finding her one day looking at old furniture in the Rue des Saints-Pères. If I ever thought of Michi, it was in Tokio. And I never would have thought of Michi in connection with French antique furniture. But that is Paris for you. Sooner or later all your friends come to Paris. You run across them accidentally and invariably they are doing something you would never have dreamed of associating them with. During her months in Paris Michi was a frequent visitor in the Rue Servandoni. She was one of those delightful combinations of Occident and Orient that Japan produces better than any other nation. She was equally at home with French and American friends, and, when Emilie was not there, knew how to juggle my eight cups and saucers and spoons back and forth between the tea-table and the kitchen, without guests catching on, more dexterously than any of my American girl friends.
We started our married life among the peoples of the Near East, and we found them out there just like other folks, when we took the trouble to come into intimate contact with them. Racially of course they are different from us as they are different from each other. Greeks, Bulgarians, Turks, Armenians, Syrians, Egyptians, Persians—each one of these names calls up faces of people I love. I have known them in their homesand in my home. A strong tie binds us to the Armenians. When you have shared the sufferings, dangers and hardships of a people, they belong to you and you belong to them in a peculiar way. Armenians came to the Rue Servandoni, poor boys with no money and no home who had escaped from Turkey, struggling students, successful painters, brilliant musicians, wealthy merchants. Every collector of Egyptian curios, of Turkish and Persian rugs, of Oriental pottery, knows Kelekian of the Place Vendôme. His small shop is wedged in between a florist and a ticket-scalper. In the window you never see more than half a dozen objects. There is always a bowl as apièce de résistance, a bowl that only a Morgan could afford to own. Pause and look over the curtain, the chances are that you will see Monsieur Kelekian sitting by a glass case of Egyptian scarabs. He will be smoking, and his right hand will be on the case. To know Monsieur Kelekian is to have faith in the resurrection of Armenia and in the future of one of the oldest races of history. We came to know him through his interest in the Adana massacres. He had never heard of the Rue Servandoni, and the street was hardly wide enough for his automobile. But he came to dinner with his wife—in spite of a disapprovingchauffeur, who thought there must be some mistake and who insisted on inquiring for us first at Number Twenty-Three and then at Number Nineteen. Although his nose never turneddown, he became accustomed to stopping in front of the grocery!
Otherchauffeursandcocherslearned during that winter a new street in Paris, and the first time they, too, made the mistake of stopping next door. Mrs. Evans, sister-in-law of the famous dentist, had a pair of black horses that shone like the varnish of her victoria. "Dear Mrs. Evans," as all the women called her, was interested in every good work. She approved of my husband, because he was a parson, and of me because I had lived in a missionary college. She knew we had no money and did not expect us to have any. Her carriage was ours for afternoon rides in the Bois de Bologne. Scrappie, "that darling missionary baby," must have her weekly outing. Mrs. Evans, I am sure, believed that the air was not what it ought to be in our quarter of Paris and that God had intrusted her with the responsibility of seeing that we were occasionally transported elsewhere. During that year we made other friends in the American Colony, who, like Mrs. Evans, cared for us for what we were. They made Paris home to us in the old-fashioned sense of the word, and the intimacies then formed have never been broken.
Gypsy Smith was an English evangelist who came to Paris that winter for a series of revival meetings in the English-speaking community. He had been traveling all over the world for twenty years. His wife had had to stay at home to look after the children. Now, forthe first time, she was free to accompany him, and came to Paris with him. We showed the Smiths some of the principal tourist points of interest one morning, and they came home to lunch with us. In the way of entertaining, they had been "touching the high spots" in Paris, as Gypsy Smith was sought after by the substantial people of the British and American communities. Our little home was a revelation to them of the fact that there were other foreigners living in Paris than the rich. Mrs. Gypsy was greatly pleased with the novelty of finding "just folks" in Paris. "A cozy little nest you have here," she said, giving me a nudge with her elbow.
There were so many people to see in Paris, old friends from home as well as new friends, that I soon began to have my afternoon. On Wednesdays I received in that tiny dining-room, with my eight cups and saucers and spoons, just as if I were mistress of a large establishment. At first, our neighbors thought it was a christening or funeral. When they realized thatles petits américainsover theépiceriewere having a weekly "at home," they were confirmed in their impression of our wealth. I confess that it was crowded at times and that the party had to overflow into the bedroom. But it was fun, especially when one of my girlhood friends, who had known me in Germantown days in my mother's home, would bring her whole family along tosee me, and exclaim, "Why, Helen Brown—!" But I would get them all in.
Two days after Christmas, my husband urged me to go walking with him. He pointed out that no one would come. But I refused. I had more conscience when I was young than I have now. Being "at home" meant sticking by the game. I had cheered up thebouletfire in the dining-room. The cups were on the table. My china platter held agâteau mochaof dear memory. Shall we ever again be able to buy layer-cakes with coffee icing an inch thick done in the delectable ups and downs like a wedding cake? And that at one franc-twenty-five?
"Run down, dear, and get me some hot crescents. It's after four o'clock, so they'll be ready."
"Now, look here. You've got to be sensible. Everyone has hosts of things to do Christmas week. Nobody will come. We'll eat the cakes for supper. Let's go over the river."
"No, that wouldn't be fair. Somebody might come."
Herbert got the crescents, put morebouletswhere I could get them easily, and was gone.
I settled myself in the steamer-chair. No sound except the ticking of our little traveling-clock, and the dropping of abouleton the hearth. An hour slipped by, and I began to realize that I might just as well havegone out. A ring at the bell. When I opened the door, there was my husband holding a bouquet of roses big enough for a bridesmaid.
"Good afternoon," said he, bowing low; "do Mr. and Mrs. Gibbons live here?"
"To be sure," said I, stifling a giggle. "I am Mrs. Gibbons."
"Indeed." My visitor shook hands with me and explained, "Mrs. Gibbons, I am delighted to meet you. I knew your husband years and years ago—before he was married, in fact. The first pleasure I have allowed myself in Paris is to look up my friend Gibbons and his wife."
He hung hat and overcoat in the hall, and handed me the flowers. "What a charming dining-room. Dear me, have I intruded? You were having a party?"
"Just my day at home."
We chatted for a full hour, discussing the fate of the House of Lords, about which my new friend confided that he was writing an article. He hoped some editor would publish it. We talked of the possibilities of next year's Salons and disagreed on the subject of futurist painting. I told my visitor about the many American friends that were turning up, and how the Gibbonses realized that if they wanted to get any work done in Paris they would have to stop acting as guides. What did he think about adopting a policy of tellingpeople that Thomas Cook had mighty good guides at ten francs a day? Perhaps, however, we should make the last exception with him, and show him the town.
We talked of Christmas, and then I was asked if I had a baby. I replied that of course I did. She was over in the Luxembourg Garden with Marie, who kept her out late on my at-home day, but who would soon bring her in.
"People that see resemblance in coloring say she looks like me, but those that see resemblance in contour say she's the image of her daddy."
"So!" said my visitor.
I put my arms around the contour.
THE Prince whom Tartarin met in Africa had lived a long time in Tarascon, and knew remarkably well one side of the town. He knew nothing of the other side. This puzzled Tartarin until he found out that his noble friend's residence in Tartarin's native town was a compulsory one. The Prince had ample time to study a certain aspect of Tarascon in detail from the little window of his penitentiary cell. We do not all have the privilege of devoting ourselves, as the Prince did, to a minute study of just one view from just one vantage-point. And yet, in certain things we share the Prince's experience. We become accustomed to a definite aspect of the things we see to the exclusion of other aspects. Thus it is that I know many parts of Paris familiarly as they appear at nightfall. I could go to these quarters at other times, but I never have. I fear the breaking of the spell. I fear disillusion. And if you want to follow me in Paris walks through this chapter, plan your strolls from five to seven during the winter months.
It began this way. In the Bibliothèque Nationale, as in the Paris of parks and gardens, the closing hourfollows the sun. The Bibliothèque has no lights. It turns you out at four, half-past four, five or six according to the season. During the months of longer days, we stayed until the last bell. In the winter we were put out before the afternoon was over. One did not feel like making for home immediately. It was too late to go far afield. We started in to explore Paris in a widening circle from the Rue de Richelieu. My husband had covered much of this ground in summer months with the Scholar from Oxford. When the light held out until late, they had time to visit old Paris with the books of Georges Cain for guides. In the winter months Herbert took me over this ground again. But I saw it all at nightfall or after dark.
It was a wonderful discovery, to combine exercise with interesting sight-seeing at the end of the day. The habit of walks through city streets, thus formed, has been persisted in through many busy years. I recommend it, even to tourists. Use your precious days for churches and museums and palaces. After they are closed, walk for an hour or two each night. You will find diversity, and, like Horatio, things you never dreamed of. And no matter how long you live in Paris, there is always something new to explore and something equally new when you follow beaten tracks.
You have to be—or grow—catholic in your tastes if you want to enjoy what Paris at nightfall offers. Of course in the beginning you look for certain things.You have a goal: tracing the city walls from old Lutetia to Henri IV; seeking traces of mediaeval days; spotting Renaissance architecture; visiting historic spots or buildings associated with famous names or events; reconstructing Paris of the Revolution; or following the characters of Victor Hugo throughLes Misérables. Before long you join all these goals, and jump from architecture to history, from history to literature. In the end, every walk you take is the observation of living people inseparable from an incomparably picturesque setting. It may take a long time to realize that your primary interest is humankind. But when you do the world is a kaleidoscope presenting new pictures, wherever you may be, each more fascinating than the one that preceded it.
"Seek and ye shall find" is a promise with a condition attached to it. You have to look before you see. An effort of the will is required. Without that effort, impressions are false or transitory or give no reaction that sinks deep. We passed close to Messina just after the earthquake. The captain of our ship obligingly slowed down to quarter-speed. Passengers crowded against the rail on the Sicilian side of the straits.
"Why, Messina is all right!" someone cried. "The newspapers have been exaggerating again."
"Wait," suggested a lawyer. He got out his opera glasses. Others did the same. As we studied Messina from the sea, and looked for the deep fissures, thecrumbling walls, we found them all along the coast. The American soldier who told me, "Since I been in France I ain't seen nothing but kilometres and rain," was not looking for anything else.
Strolling after dark helps to bring into the foreground the human element in the picture of Paris streets. Your field of vision is limited. You do not see too many things at once. And you have to keep your eyes open. Many a quaint corner, many a building, is less often missed at nightfall than during the day.
Paris is divided into arrondissements, each one with its local administration, itsmaire, itsmairie, its postal service, and its police. The postal authorities have tried in vain to insist upon the placing of the arrondissement indication upon the letters. But they have never had much success. It is enough to remember where your friends live without having to keep in mind twenty different arrondissements! Before the war your arrondissement meant little to you, and you often did not know its number if you wanted to be married, to register the birth of a new baby, or got into difficulties with the police. Since the war, residents in Paris came to know their own arrondissements because of bread tickets, passports, income-tax declarations and other annoyances. But in planning your walks at nightfall, it is helpful to take a map of Paris and know something about the divisions of the city. We started our explorationsby hazard, and then found to our astonishment that we had been going from one arrondissement to another, practically following the numerical order.
The Bibliothèque Nationale is just on the border between the First and Second Arrondissements. Arrondissements One to Four are the old city on the Rive Droite between the Grands Boulevards and the Seine. Arrondissements Five to Seven include similar quarters on the Rive Gauche. Some of the most interesting strolls are in the outer arrondissements. But the seven inner arrondissements provide enough for years without ever having to take the subway or tram.
The four Rive Droite arrondissements stretch from the Place de la Concorde to the Place de la Bastille, and include the Ile de la Cité and the Ile Saint-Louis. The three Rive Gauche arrondissements stretch from the Eiffel Tower to the Jardin des Plantes. On the Rive Droite the Place de l'Opéra and the Place de la République, and on the Rive Gauche the Place de Breteuil and the Place de l'Observatoire, are the outer corners of the inner arrondissements. The Boulevard de Sébastopol on the Rive Droite and the Boulevard Saint-Michel on the Rive Gauche form the only straight route, cutting through the mass of tangled streets of succeeding centuries. Running north and south, this central line divides the arrondissements as the Seine does, running east and west.
I have a horror of guide-books, partly because I donot know how to use them (I never have learned!) and partly because I love to find my way without pre-meditation and by accident. But many of my readers will never have the same opportunity I have enjoyed of discovering fascinating spots at nightfall. Why should I resist the temptation of indicating some of the strolls that make the late winter afternoons delectable?
Everyone knows the Rue de Rivoli as far as the Oratoire or perhaps to the Tour Saint-Jacques. At the crossing of the Boulevard Sébastopol, the Rue de Rivoli leaves the familiar heart of Paris and enters the Fourth Arrondissement. It becomes the Rue Saint-Antoine a couple of blocks before the Eglise Saint-Paul. There the first break in the straight line from the Place de la Concorde occurs. You deflect a little bit to the right, and before you is the Bastille column. The Rue de Rivoli and the Rue Saint-Antoine are the main artery of the Fourth Arrondissement. No quarter of Paris affords more variety in walks at nightfall. Starting from the Boulevard de Sébastopol, the streets on the left, at angles and parallel to the main artery, are a labyrinth. Here is the Ghetto in a setting incomparably more picturesque than the Ghettos of London and New York. I doubt if even the oldest Pariscocherfinds his way here unerringly. Through some of the streets no carriage can pass. The narrowest street in Paris, the Rue de Venise, is here. Beginning oppositethe Hôtel de Ville, the Rue du Temple cuts through the Ghetto all the way to the Place de la République. Then come the equally interesting right-angle streets, the Rue des Archives and the Rue Vieille du Temple. On the latter faces the Imprimerie Nationale. And do not miss the parallel streets, Rue de la Verrerie, Rue du Roi de Sicile, Rue Sainte-Croix de la Bretonne, Rue des Rosiers. Further along (now we are in the Rue Saint-Antoine) the Rue de Birague leads one short block into the Place des Vosges, one of the rare bits remaining of Paris of Henri IV.
On the right hand side we have the Hôtel de Ville, the old buildings behind the Lycée Charlemagne and the Quai des Célestins. Several bridges cross to the Ile de la Cité and the Ile Saint-Louis. The Pont Saint-Louis connects the two islands. There is nothing more wonderful in Paris than to cross the Pont Sully from the eastern end of the Quai des Célestins, walk through the Rue Saint-Louis-en-l'Ile, and come suddenly upon the apse of Notre Dame, protected by its flying buttresses.
In the Second Arrondissement, start from the Place des Victoires at the end of the Rue des Petits-Champs, and find your way through the various tortuous routes that bring you out on the Grands Boulevards to the Boulevard Poissonnière, the Boulevard Bonne-Nouvelle and the Boulevard Saint-Denis. A few hundred feet from the Grands Boulevards, to the right of the Rue Saint-Denis, as you go toward the river, Paris of theRevolution remains in almost as full measure as in the Sixth Arrondissement.
We must not leave the Rive Droite without mentioning two walks at nightfall in the outer arrondissement. From the Place de la République, the most interesting glimpse of a crowded workingmen's quarter can be gained in an hour by walking up the Rue du Faubourg du Temple, which becomes the Rue de Belleville. There is a steep climb until you reach the Eglise Saint-Jean-Baptiste. To the right is Ménilmontant, dominating the famous Père-Lachaise cemetery, and to the left you can climb still farther to Buttes-Chaumont. The second walk is along the Quai de Jemmapes, which you reach by turning to the left from the Rue du Faubourg du Temple just after crossing the canal. A few blocks up, on the right, through the Rue Grange aux Belles you pass the Hôpital Saint-Louis, a group of seventeenth-century buildings which continue to do blessed work in the twentieth century.
Dear me! I have forgotten Montmartre, where you climb endless flights of stone steps and find—despite the touristréclame—probably more of old Paris than in any other part of the city.
On the Rive Gauche, the walks at nightfall are more difficult to indicate. You can go anywhere in the three inner arrondissements, and you will not be disappointed. Walk year after year and you will begin to wonder whether you ever will follow out the oftformedresolution of returning to America to live. In the Seventh Arrondissement the region between the Quai d'Orsay and the Rue de Sèvres, the Rue des Saints-Pères and the Invalides is the Faubourg Saint-Germain, where are to be found the finest residences in Paris, far ahead of anything in the Etoile Quarter. But unless you are lucky enough to have theentréeto aristocratic and diplomatic Paris, you can only guess at the beauty of the gardens whose trees thrust alluring limbs over high walls and at what is behind the stately portals of thehôtels.
In the Sixth Arrondissement the Boulevard Saint-Germain and the Rue de Vaugirard are the best streets to take as guides in your wanderings. Between the boulevard and the river, and between the boulevard and the Rue de Vaugirard, most of the streets are thoroughfares, a swarming mass of autos and wagons and push-carts, between five and seven.
What shall I say of the Fifth Arrondissement, most fascinating of all to me because I know it best at nightfall, I suppose? My favorite nightfall walk in Paris is behind the Panthéon. Start at the Place Maubert, on the Boulevard Saint-Germain, climb the Rue de la Mont Sainte-Geneviève. Turn to the left through the Rue Descartes, and you will find yourself in the Rue Mouffetard. Here you are as far from modern Paris as you will ever get. You walk for nearly a mile with no interruption of trams and omnibuses. No taxi cabor truck would dream of using the Rue Mouffetard as a thoroughfare. And yet, on the Rue Mouffetard, to eat and drink and dress yourself and furnish your house, you can buy all you need. You do not have to hunt for it: it is displayed before your eyes. The Rue Mouffetard. Here you are as far from modern Paris time, and I might shrink from some of the foodstuffs, if not all, it offers, were I to buy by sunlight. But by flickering torch-light the Rue Mouffetard is Araby to me. And I never come out at the Avenue des Gobelins without a sigh. Why isn't the Rue Mouffetard just a bit longer?
AVISITOR once asked me how it was possible for Paris to maintain so many cafés, and said how distressing it was to see so many women in them and there was more drinking than in New York or London—question and inferences all in one breath, just like my sentence. My friend was bewildered because he did not understand theraison d'êtreof the café in French life. He thought that a café was a place to drink according to the American notion of drinking. The women were bad women in his eyes and the men on the downward path. To one who holds this curious notion the number of cafés in Paris and the crowds in them and at the little tables in front of them are inexplicable and alarming. Cafés, restaurants,brasseriesandzincsline the boulevards, and there are at least two or three to a block in every street. Owing to the intensive apartment house life shops of all kinds are more frequent in Paris than elsewhere, but you may have to walk to get anything you want. To drink or eat, no. The place is right under your nose.
All restaurants serve drinks. I know of only onenon-alcoholic restaurant in Paris: that is the vegetarian place on the Rue Notre-Dame-des-Champs! If you did not eat in a "drinking-place," you'd pretty soon starve. Many of the big cafés do not serve food. Some have one dish, called theplat du jour, with cheese and fruit afterwards. Others have oysters and snails and their ownspecialités. Others, while not advertising meals, serve atable d'hôteor a very limitedà la carte. In all, however, hot coffee is to be had at all hours and every kind of a drink is on tap. Thezincsare little bits of places where you get hot coffee, beer or apetit verre. Coal and wood merchants also serve alcohol. In the more humble streets (which are to be found in every quarter), cafés are dirty stuffy places, known asdébits. Rare is the "drinking-place" that has not itsterrasse. This may be only a chair or two and a single table on the side-walk.
Theterrassesof restaurants as well as of cafés are maintained throughout the winter. It is a familiar sight to see a table-cloth flapping in the wind, held down by a salt-cellar and a mustard-pot. The days are few that you cannot sit out. It does not get very cold in Paris and an awning protects you from the rain. In some of the boulevard cafés theterrassesare actually heated by stoves!
The Paris café is wholly different from the American saloon. None thinks it is wrong to drink in France. Total abstinence is a funny American idea to ourfriends overseas. Taking a drink in public is as natural as putting your arm around your girl in public. Everybody does it. You rarely see a drunken man or woman just as you rarely see poverty. Alcoholism (by which is meant poisoning the system and breaking down the health by excessive use of alcohol) is an evil France has to combat as much as any other country. But the French have never had it preached to them that the evil can be overcome by prohibiting the use of wines and liquors or by the example of a part of the community voluntarily abstaining for the sake of weaker brothers. The anti-alcohol movement in France does exist. As the maintenance of war legislation against absinthe and kindred spirits proves, it has public opinion behind it. But the connotation ofalcoholicis limited in France. The Gallic sense of proportion prevents the French from extremes in anything. Since they do not drink to excess, they have no reason for regarding beer and wines as alcohol. Often your French friends tell you that they never touch alcohol. In the same breath they offer you delicious wine.
Scruples understood and appreciated in America are often meaningless when you live in another country. Stick to your white ribbon principles if you will, but do not persist in your notion that cafés are places where it is not respectable to be seen. Why cut yourself off from an indispensable feature of Paris life?
The Panthéon from the Rue SoufflotThe Panthéon from the Rue Soufflot
The hour of theapéritiffinds theterrassesof the cafés crowded. You may have difficulty in getting a place outside. Having worked all day and perhaps having walked home, the Parisian saves a half hour before dinner for his appetizer. He sits at the little table in front of his favorite café and watches the passing crowd. It is no hastily swallowed cocktail, leaning against a bar and shut off from eyes like mine by a swinging screen door. It is no prerogative of man. Sometimes on week days and always on Sundays, his wife and children are with him.
When we were living in the Rue Servandoni, we got into the habit of going out for our after-dinner coffee. The reason was probably the same as that of most Parisians. Living quarters were small. The baby was asleep in the front room. Toward the end of the month especially we were not always in a position to keep the tiny dining-room fire replenished all evening. We thought of the gas bill. We liked to get a little air. We were fond of music. Arm in arm we would walk along the Rue Vaugirard to the Boul' Miche. From the Closerie des Lilas near the Observatoire to the river you had plenty of choice for your after-dinner coffee. At the foot of the Rue Soufflot is the Café du Panthéon. On the corner of the Rue de la Sorbonne is the Café d'Harcourt. Just off the boulevard, on the Rue de l'Ecole de Medecine, is the Taverne Pascal. These were our favorites. Pascal has noterrasse. We went there when it rained or when we thought ofMunich beer. Harcourt used to have a red-coated orchestra, and was the gayest place on the Boulevard Saint-Michel. At the Panthéon you paid two sous more, but the coffee was better. We never had to spend more than a franc for the two of us. A checker-board or cards could be had of the waiter. If you wanted to write letters, you asked for a blotter and pen and ink.