Chapter II: Part 2

We leaned back against the seat and drank in the soft air. I don't think that we talked very much. The cocher was driving over the bridge of Alexandre III with its golden horses gleaming in the late afternoon sunlight when Peter bent forward and addressed him,

Allez au Café Anglais.

Where meant nothing to me, but I was a little surprised at his hesitation. The cocher changed his route, grumbling a bit, for he was out of his course.

I don't know why I ever suggested Foyot, said Peter, or the Café Anglais either. We'll go to the Petit Riche.

_Chapter III_

If the reader has been led to expect a chapter devoted to an account of Mary Garden in Aphrodite, he will be disappointed. I did not see Mary Garden that evening, nor for many evenings thereafter, and I do not remember, indeed, that Peter Whiffle ever referred to her again. We dined at a quiet little restaurant, Boilaive by name, near the Folies-Bergère. The interior, as bare of decoration as are most such interiors in Paris, where the food and wines are given more consideration than the mural paintings, was no larger than that of a small shop. My companion led me straight to a tiny winding staircase in one corner, which we ascended, and presently we found ourselves in a private room, with three tables in it, to be sure, but two of these remained unoccupied. We began our dinner with escargots à la bordelaise, which I was eating for the first time, but I have never been squeamish about novel food. A man with a broad taste in food is inclined to be tolerant in regard to everything. Also, when he begins to understand the cooking of a nation, he is on the way to an understanding of the nation itself. There were many other dishes, but I particularly remember a navarin because Peter spoke of it, pointing out that every country has one dish in which it is honourable to put whatever is left over in the larder. In China (or out of it, in Chinese restaurants), this dish is called chop suey; in Ireland, Irish stew; in Spain, olla or puchero; in France, ragoût or navarin; in Italy, minestra; and in America, hash. We lingered over such matters, getting acquainted, so to speak, passing through the polite stages of early conversation, slipping beyond the poses that one unconsciously assumes with a new friend. I think I did most of the talking, although Whiffle told me that he had come from Ohio, that he was in Paris on a sort of mission, something to do with literature, I gathered. We ate and drank slowly and it must have been nearly ten when he paid the bill and we drove away, this time to Fouquet's, an open-air restaurant in the Champs-Elysées, where we sat on the broad terrasse and drank many bocks, so many, indeed, that by the time we had decided to settle our account, the saucers in front of us were piled almost to our chins. We should probably have remained there all night, had he not suggested that I go to his rooms with him. That night, my second in Paris, I would have gone anywhere with any one. But there was that in Peter Whiffle which had awakened both my interest and my curiosity for I, too, had the ambition to write, and it seemed to me possible that I was in the presence of a writing man, an author.

We entered another taxi-auto or fiacre, I don't remember and it doesn't matter, there were so many peregrinations in those days, and we drove to an apartment house in a little street near the Rue Blanche. The house being modern, there was an ascenseur and I experienced for the first time the thrill of one of those little personally conducted lifts, in which you press your own button and take your own chances. Since that night I have had many strange misadventures with these intransigent elevators, but on this occasion, miraculously, the machine stopped at the fourth floor, as it had been bidden, and soon we were in the sitting-room of Whiffle's apartment, a room which I still remember, although subsequently I have been in half a dozen of his other rooms in various localities.

It was very orderly, this room, although not exactly arranged, at any rate not arranged like Martha's studio, as if to set object against object and colour against colour. It was a neat little ivory French room, with a white fire-place, picked in gold, surmounted by a gilt clock and Louis XVI candlesticks. There were charming aquatints on the ivory walls and chairs and tables of the Empire period. The tables were laden with neat piles of pamphlets. Beside a type-writer, was ranged a heap of note-books at least a foot high and stacked on the floor in one corner there were other books, formidable-looking volumes of weight and heft, "thick bulky octavos with cut-and-come-again expressions," apparently dictionaries and lexicons. An orange Persian cat lay asleep in one of the chairs as we entered, but he immediately stretched himself, extending his noble paws, yawning and arching his back, and then came forward to greet us, purring.

Hello, George! cried Whiffle, as the cat waved his magnificent red tail back and forth and rubbed himself against Peter's leg.

George? I queried.

Yes, that's George Moore. He goes everywhere with me in a basket, when I travel, and he is just as contented in Toledo as he is in Paris, anywhere there is raw meat to be had. Places mean nothing to him. My best friend.

I sat in one of the chairs and lit a cigarette. Peter brought out a bottle of cognac and a couple of glasses. He threw open the shutters and the soft late sounds of the city filtered in with the fresh spring air. One could just hear the faint tinkle of an orchestra at some distant bal.

I like you, Van Vechten, my host began at last, and I've got to talk to somebody. My work has just begun and there's so much to say about it. Tell me to stop when you get tired.... In a way, I want to know what you think; in another way, it helps me merely to talk, in the working out of my ideas. But who was there to talk to, I mean before you came? I can see that you may be interested in what I am trying to do, good God! in what I _will_ do! I've done a lot already....

You have begun your book then?

Well, you might say so, but I haven't written a line. I've collected the straw; the bricks will come. I've not been idle. You see those catalogues?

I nodded.

He fumbled them over. Then, without a break, with a strange glow of exhilaration on his pale ethereal face, his eyes flashing, his hands gesticulating, his body swaying, marching up and down the room, he recited with a crescendo which mounted to a magnificent fortissimo in the coda:

Perfumery catalogues: Coty, Houbigant, Atkinson, Rigaud, Rue de la Paix, Bond Street, Place Vendôme, Regent Street, Nirvana, Chypre, Sakountala, Ambre, Après l'Ondée, Quelques Fleurs, Fougère Royale, Myrbaha, Yavahnah, Gaudika, Délices de Péra, Cœur de Jeannette, Djer Kiss, Jockey-Club, and the Egyptian perfumes, Myrrh and Kyphy. Did you know that Richelieu lived in an atmosphere heavily laden with the most pungent perfumes to inflame his sexual imagination? Automobile catalogues: Mercedes, Rolls-Royce, Ford, tires, self-starters, limousines, carburettors, gas. Jewellery catalogues: heaps of 'em, all about diamonds and platinum, chrysoprase and jade, malachite and chalcedony, amethysts and garnets, and the emerald, the precious stone which comes the nearest to approximating that human manifestation known as art, because it always has flaws; red jasper, sacred to the rosy god, Bacchus, the green plasma, blood-stone, cornelian, cat's-eye, amber, with its medicinal properties, the Indian jewels, spinels, the reddish orange jacinth, and the violet almandine. Did you know that the Emperor Claudius used to clothe himself in smaragds and sardonyx stones and that Pope Paul II died of a cold caught from the weight and chill of the rings which loaded his aged fingers? Are you aware that the star-topaz is as rare as a Keutschacher Rubentaler of the year 1504? Yonder is a volume which treats of the glyptic lore. In it you may read of the Assyrian cylinders fashioned from red and green serpentine, the Egyptian scarabei, carved in steaschist; you may learn of the seal-cutters of Nineveh and of the Signet of Sennacherib, now preserved in the British Museum. Do you know that a jewel engraved with Hercules at the fountain was deposited in the tomb of the Frankish King Childeric at Tournay? Do you know of Mnesarchus, the Tyrrhene gem-cutter, who practised his art at Samos? Have you seen the Julia of Evodus, engraved in a giant aquamarine, or the Byzantine topaz, carved with the figure of the blind bow-boy, sacrificing the Psyche-butterfly, or the emerald signet of Polycrates, with the lyre cut upon it, or the Etruscan peridot representing a sphinx scratching her ear with her hind paw, or the sapphire, discovered in a disused well at Hereford, in which the head of the Madonna has been chiseled, with the inscription, round the beasil, in Lombard letters, TECTA LEGE LECTA TEGE, or the jacinth engraved with the triple face of Baphomet, with a legend of darkly obscene purport? The breastplate of the Jewish High Priest had its oracular gems, which were the Urim and Thummim. Apollonius Tyaneus, the sorcerer, for the purposes of his enchantments, wore special rings with appropriate stones for each day of the week. Also, in this curious book, and others which you may examine, such as George III's Dactyliotheca Smithiana (Venice; 1767), you will find some account of the gems of the Gnostics: an intaglio in a pale convex plasma, carved with the Chnuphis Serpent, raising himself aloft, with the seven vowels, the elements of his name, above; another jewel engraved with the figure of the jackal-headed Anubis, the serpent with the lion's head, the infant Horus, seated on the lotus, the cynocephalus baboon, and the Abraxas-god, Iao, created from the four elements; an Egyptian seal of the god, Harpocrates, seated on the mystic lotus, in adoration of the Yoni; and an esoteric green jasper amulet in the form of a dragon, surrounded by rays. Florists' catalogues: strangely wicked cyclamens, meat-eating begonias, beloved of des Esseintes (Henri Matisse grows these peccant plants in his garden and they suggest his work), shaggy chrysanthemums, orchids, green, white, and mauve, the veined salpiglossis, the mournful, rich-smelling tube-rose, all the mystic blossoms adored by Robert de la Condamine's primitive, tortured, orgiastic saints in The Double Garden, marigolds and daisies, the most complex and the most simple flowers of all, hypocritical fuchsias, and calceolaria, sacred to la bella Cenerentola. Reaper catalogues: you know, the McCormicks and the Middle West. Porcelain catalogues: Rookwood, Royal Doulton, Wedgwood, Delft, the quaint, clean, heavy, charming Brittany ware, Majolica, the wondrous Chinese porcelains, self-colour, sang de bœuf, apple of roses, peach-blow, Sèvres, signed with the fox of Emile Renard, or the eye of Pajou, or the little house of Jean-Jacques Anteaume. Furniture catalogues: Adam and Louis XV, Futurist, Empire, Venetian and Chinese, Poincaré and Grand Rapids. Art-dealers' catalogues: Félicien Rops and Jo Davidson, Renoir and Franz Hals, Cranach and Picasso, Manet and Carpaccio. Book-dealers' catalogues: George Borrow, Thomas Love Peacock, Ambrose Bierce, William Beckford, Robert Smith Surtees, Francis William Bain. Do you know the true story of Ambrose Gwinett, related by Oliver Goldsmith: the fellow who, having been hanged and gibbeted for murdering a traveller with whom he had shared his bed-chamber at a tavern, revived in the night, shipped at sea as a sailor, and later met on a vessel the man for whose murder he had been hung? Gwinett's supposed victim had been attacked during the night with a severe bleeding of the nose, had risen and left the house for a walk by the sea-wall, and had been shanghaied. Catalogues of curious varieties of cats: Australian, with long noses and long hind-legs, like kangaroos, Manx cats without any tails and chocolate and fawn Siamese cats with sapphire eyes, the cacodorous Russian blue cats, and male tortoise-shells. Catalogues of tinshops: tin plates, tin cups, and can-openers. Catalogues of laces: Valenciennes and Cluny and Chantilly and double-knot, Punto in Aria, a Spanish lace of the sixteenth century, lace constructed of human hair or aloe fibre, Point d'Espagne, made by Jewesses. Catalogues of toys: an engine that spreads smoke in the air, as it runs around a track with a circumference of eight feet, a doll that cries, Uncle! Uncle! a child's opium set. Catalogues of operas: Marta and Don Pasquale, Der Freischütz and Mefistofele, Simon Bocanegra and La Dolores. Cook-Books: Mrs. Pennell's The Feasts of Autolycus, a grandiose treatise on the noblest of the arts, wherein you may read of the amorous adventures of The Triumphant Tomato and the Incomparable Onion, Mr. Finck's Food and Flavour, the gentle Abraham Hayward on The Art of Dining, the biography of Vatel, the super-cook who killed himself because the fish for the king's dinner were missing, Mrs. Glasse's Cookery, which Dr. Johnson boasted that he could surpass, and, above all, Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin's Physiologie du Goût. Catalogues of harness, bits and saddles. Catalogues of cigarettes: Dimitrinos and Melachrinos, Fatimas and Sweet Caporals. Catalogues of liqueurs: Danziger Goldwasser and Crème Yvette, Parfait Amour, as tanagrine as the blood in the sacred altar chalice. Catalogues of paints: yellow ochre and gamboge, burnt sienna and Chinese vermilion. Catalogues of hats: derbies and fedoras, straw and felt hats, top-hats and caps, sombreros, tam-o'shanters, billycocks, shakos and tarbooshes....

He stopped, breathless with excitement, demanding, What do you think of that?

I don't know what to think....

I'm sure you don't. That isn't all. There are dictionaries and lexicons, not only German, English, French, Italian, Russian, and Spanish, but also Hebrew, Persian, Magyar, Chinese, Zend, Sanscrit, Hindustani, Negro dialects, French argot, Portuguese, American slang, and Pennsylvania Dutch.

And what are those curious pamphlets?

He lifted a few and read off the titles:

A study of the brain of the late Major J.W. Powell.

A study of the anatomic relations of the optic nerve to the accessory cavities of the nose.

On regeneration in the pigmented skin of the frog and on the character of the chromatophores.

The chondrocranium of an embryo pig.

Morphology of the parthogenetic development of amphitrite.

Note on the influence of castration on the weight of the brain and spinal cord in the albino rat.

There are, he added solemnly, many strange words in these pamphlets, not readily to be found elsewhere.

Now Peter pointed to the pile of note-books on the table.

These are my note-books. I have ranged Paris for my material. For days I have walked in the Passage des Panoramas and the Rue St. Honoré, making lists of every object in the windows. In the case of books I have described the bindings. I have stopped before the shops of fruit vendors, antique dealers, undertakers, jewellers, and fashioners of artificial flowers. I have spent so much time in the Galeries Lafayette and the Bon Marché that I have probably been mistaken for a shoplifter. These books are full of results. What do you think of it?

But what is all this for?

For my work, of course. For my work.

I can't imagine, I began almost in a whisper, I was so astonished, what you do, what you are going to do. Are you writing an encyclopedia?

No, my intention is not to define or describe, but to enumerate. Life is made up of a collection of objects, and the mere citation of them is sufficient to give the reader a sense of form and colour, atmosphere and _style_. And form, style, manner in literature are everything; subject is nothing. Nothing whatever, he added impressively, after a pause. Do you know what Buffon wrote: Style is the only passport to posterity. It is not range of information, nor mastery of some little known branch of science, nor yet novelty of matter, that will insure immortality. Recall the great writers, Théophile Gautier, Jules Barbey d'Aurevilly, Joris Huysmans, Oscar Wilde: they all used this method, catalogues, catalogues, catalogues! All great art is a matter of cataloguing life, summing it up in a list of objects. This is so true that the commercial catalogues themselves are almost works of art. Their only flaw is that they pause to describe. If it only listed objects, without defining them, a dealer's catalogue would be as precious as a book by Gautier.

During this discourse, George Moore, the orange cat, had been wandering around, rather restlessly, occasionally gazing at Peter with a semi-quizzical expression and an absurd cock of the ears. At some point or other, however, he had evidently arrived at the conclusion that this extra display of emotion on the part of his human companion boded him no evil and, having satisfied himself in this regard, he leaped lightly to the mantelshelf, circled his enormous bulk miraculously around three or four times on the limited space at his disposal, and sank into a profound slumber when, probably, with dreams of garrets full of lazy mice, his ears and his tail, which depended a foot below the shelf, began to twitch.

Peter continued to talk: d'Aurevilly wrote his books in different coloured inks. It was a wonderful idea. Black ink would never do to describe certain scenes, certain objects. I can imagine an entire book written in purple, or green, or blood-red, but the best book would be written in many colours. Consider, for a moment, the distinction between purple and violet, shades which are cousins: the one suggests the most violent passions or something royal or papal, the other a nunnery or a widow, or a being bereft of any capacity for passion.

Henry James should write his books in white ink on white paper and, by a system of analogy, you can very well see that Rider Haggard should write his books in white ink on black paper. Pale ideas, obviously expressed. Gold! Think what you could do with gold! If silence is golden, surely the periods, the commas, the semicolons, and dashes should be of gold. But not only the stops could gleam and shine; whole silent pages might glitter. And blue, bright blue; what more suggestive colour for the writer than bright blue?

Not only should manuscripts be written in multi-coloured inks, but they should be written on multi-coloured papers, and then they should be printed in multi-coloured inks on multi-coloured papers. The art of book-making, in the sense that the making of a book is part of its authorship, part of its creation, is not even begun.

The sculptor is not satisfied with moulding his idea in clay; he gives it final form in marble or malachite or jade or bronze. Many an author, however, having completed work on his manuscript, is content to allow his publisher to choose the paper, the ink, the binding, the typography: all, obviously, part of the author's task. It is the publisher's wish, no doubt, to issue the book as cheaply as possible, and to this end he will make as many books after the same model as he practicably can. But every book should have a different appearance from every other book. Every book should have the aspect to which its ideas give birth. The form of the material should dictate the form of the binding. Who but a fool, for example, would print and bind Lavengro and Roderick Hudson in a similar manner? And yet that is just what publishers will do if they are let alone.

Peter had become so excited that he had awakened George Moore, who now descended from the mantelpiece and sought the seclusion of a couch in the corner where, after a few abortive licks at his left hind-leg, and a pretence of scrubbing his ears, he again settled into sleep. As for me, I listened, entranced, and as the night before I had discovered Paris, it seemed to me now that I was discovering the secrets of the writer's craft and I determined to go forth in the morning with a note-book, jotting down the names of every object I encountered.

I must have been somewhat bewildered for I repeated a question I had asked before:

Have you written anything yet?

Not yet.... I am collecting my materials. It may take me considerably longer to collect what I shall require for a very short book.

What is the book to be about?

Van Vechten, Van Vechten, you are not following me! he cried, and he again began to walk up and down the little room. What is the book to be about? Why, it is to be about the names of the things I have collected. It is to be about three hundred pages, he added triumphantly. That is what it is to be about, about three hundred pages, three hundred pages of colour and style and lists, lists of objects, all jumbled artfully. There isn't a moral, or an idea, or a plot, or even a character. There's to be no propaganda or preaching, or violence, or emotion, or even humour. I am not trying to imitate Dickens or Dostoevsky. They did not write books; they wrote newspapers. Art eliminates all such rubbish. Art has nothing to do with ideas. Art is abstract. When art becomes concrete it is no longer art. Thank God, I know what I want to do! Thank God, I haven't wasted my time admiring hack work! Thank God, I can start in at once constructing a masterpiece! Why a list of passengers sailing on the Kronprinz Wilhelm is more nearly a work of art than a novel by Thomas Hardy! What is there in that? Anybody can do it. Where is the arrangement, the colour, the form? Hardy merely photographs life!

But aren't you trying to photograph still life?

Peter's face was almost purple; I thought he would burst a blood-vessel.

Don't you understand that perfumes and reaping-machines are never to be found together in real life? That is art, making a pattern, dragging unfamiliar words and colours and sounds together until they form a pattern, a beautiful pattern. An Aubusson carpet is art, and it is assuredly not a photograph of still life.... Art....

I don't know how much more of this there was but, when Peter finally stopped talking, the sunlight was streaming in through the window.

_Chapter IV_

It was many days before I saw Peter again. I met other men and women. I visited the Louvre and at first stood humbly in the Salon Carré before the Monna Lisa and in the long corridor of the Venus de Milo; a little later, I became thuriferous before Sandro Botticelli's frescoes from the Villa Lemmi and Watteau's Pierrot. I made a pilgrimage to the Luxembourg Gallery and read Huysmans's evocation of the picture before Moreau's Salome. I sat in the tiny old Roman arena, Lutetia's amphitheatre, constructed in the second or third century, and conjured up visions of lions and Christian virgins. I drank tea at the Pavilion d'Armenonville in the Bois and I bought silk handkerchiefs of many colours at the Galeries Lafayette. I began to carry my small change in a pig-skin purse and I learned to look out for bad money. Every morning I called for mail at the American Express Company in the Rue Scribe. I ate little wild strawberries with Crème d'Isigny. I bought old copies of l'Assiette au Beurre on the quais and new copies of Le Sourire at kiosques. I heard Werther at the Opéra-Comique and I saw Lina Cavalieri in Thaïs at the Opéra. I made journeys to Versailles, Saint Cloud, and Fontainebleau. I inspected the little hotel in the Rue des Beaux-Arts where Oscar Wilde died and I paid my respects to his tomb in Père-Lachaise. The fig-leaf was missing from the heroic figure on the monument. It had been stolen, the cemetery-guard informed me, par une jeune miss anglaise, who desired a souvenir. I drank champagne cocktails, sitting on a stool, at the American bar in the Grand Hotel. I drank whisky and soda, ate salted nuts, and talked with English racing men at Henry's bar, under the delightful brown and yellow mural decorations, exploiting ladies of the 1880 period with bangs, and dresses with bustles, and over-drapings, and buttons down the front. I enjoyed long bus rides and I purchased plays in the arcades of the Odéon. I went to the races at Chantilly. I drank cocktails at Louis's bar in the Rue Racine. Louis Doerr, the patron, had worked as a bar-man in Chicago and understood the secrets of American mixed drinks. Doubtless, he could have made a Fireman's Shirt. He divided his time between his little bar and his atelier, where he gave boxing lessons to the students of the quarter. When he was teaching the manly art, Madame Doerr manipulated the shaker. I attended services at Les Hannetons and Maurice's Bar and I strolled through the Musée de Cluny, where I bought postcards of chastity belts and instruments of torture. I read Maupassant in the Parc Monceau. I took in the naughty revues at Parisiana, the Ba-ta-clan, and the Folies-Bergère. I purchased many English and American novels in the Tauchnitz edition and I discovered a miniature shop in the Rue de Furstenberg, where elegant reprints of bawdy eighteenth century French romances might be procured. I climbed to the top of the towers of Notre-Dame, particularly to observe a chimère which was said to resemble me, and I ascended the Tour Eiffel in an elevator. I consumed hors d'œuvres at the Brasserie Universelle. I attended a band concert in the Tuileries Gardens. I dined with Olive Fremstad at the Mercedes and Olive Fremstad dined with me at the Café d'Harcourt. I heard Salome at the Châtelet, Richard Strauss conducting, with Emmy Destinn as the protagonist in a modest costume, trimmed with fur, which had been designed, it was announced, by the Emperor of Germany. I discovered the Restaurant Cou-Cou, which I have described in The Merry-Go-Round, and I made pilgrimages to the Rat Mort, the Nouvelle Athènes, and the Elysée Montmartre, sacred to the memory of George Moore. They appeared to have altered since he confessed as a young man. I stood on a table at the Bal Tabarin and watched the quadrille, the pas de quatre, concluding with the grand écart, which was once sinister and wicked but which has come, through the portentous solemnity with which tradition has invested it, to have almost a religious significance. I learned to drink Amer Picon, grenadine, and white absinthe. I waited three hours in the street before Liane de Pougy's hotel in the Rue de la Néva to see that famous beauty emerge to take her drive, and I waited nearly as long at the stage-door of the Opéra-Comique for a glimpse of the exquisite Regina Badet. I embarked on one of the joyous little Seine boats and I went slumming in the Place d'Italie, La Villette, a suburb associated in the memory with the name of Yvette Guilbert, and Belleville. I saw that very funny farce, Vous n'avez rien à declarer at the Nouveautés. In the Place des Vosges, I admired the old brick houses, among the few that Napoleon and the Baron Haussmann spared in their deracination of Paris. On days when I felt poor, I dined with the cochers at some marchand de vins. On days when I felt rich, I dined with the cocottes at the Café de Paris. I examined the collection of impressionist paintings at the house of Monsieur Durand-Ruel, No. 37, Rue de Rome, and the vast accumulation of unfinished sketches for a museum of teratology at the house of Gustave Moreau, No. 14, Rue de La Rochefoucauld, room after room of unicorns, Messalinas, muses, magi, Salomes, sphinxes, argonauts, centaurs, mystic flowers, chimerae, Semeles, hydras, Magdalens, griffins, Circes, ticpolongas, and crusaders. I drank tea in the Ceylonese tea-room in the Rue Caumartin, where coffee-hued Orientals with combs in their hair waited on the tables. I gazed longingly into the show-windows of the shops where Toledo cigarette-cases, Bohemian garnets, and Venetian glass goblets were offered for sale. I bought a pair of blue velvet workman's trousers, a béret, and a pair of canvas shoes at Au Pays, 162 Faubourg St. Martin. I often enjoyed my chocolate and omelet at the Café de la Régence, where everybody plays chess or checkers and has played chess or checkers for a century or two, and where the actors of the Comédie Française, which is just across the Place, frequently, during a rehearsal, come in their make-up for lunch. I learned the meaning of flic, gigolette, maquereau, tapette, and rigolo. I purchased a dirty silk scarf and a pair of Louis XV brass candlesticks, which I still possess, in the Marché du Temple. I tasted babas au rhum, napoléons, and palmiers. I ordered a suit, which I never wore, from a French tailor for 150 francs. I bought some Brittany ware in an old shop back of Notre-Dame. I admired the fifteenth century apocalyptic glass in the Sainte-Chapelle and the thirteenth century glass in the Cathedral at Chartres. I learned that demi-tasse is an American word, that Sparkling Burgundy is an American drink, and that I did not like French beer. I stayed away from the receptions at the American embassy. I was devout in Saint Sulpice, the Russian Church in the Rue Daru, Saint Germain-des-Prés, Saint Eustache, Sacré-Cœur, and Saint Jacques, and I attended a wedding at the Madeleine, which reminded me that Bel Ami had been married there. I passed pleasant evenings at the Boîte à Fursy, on the Rue Pigalle, and Les Noctambules, on the Rue Champollion. I learned to speak easily of Mayol, Eve Lavallière, Dranem, Ernest la Jeunesse, Colette Willy, Max Dearly, Charles-Henry Hirsch, Lantelme, André Gide, and Jeanne Bloch. I saw Clemenceau, Edward VII, and the King of Greece. I nibbled toasted scones at a tea-shop on the Rue de Rivoli. I met the Steins. In short, you will observe that I did everything that young Americans do when they go to Paris.

On a certain afternoon, early in June, I found myself sitting at a table in the Café de la Paix with Englewood Jennings and Frederic Richards, two of my new friends. Richards is a famous person today and even then he was somebody. He had a habit of sketching, wherever he might be, on a sheet of paper at a desk at the Hotel Continental or on a program at the theatre. He drew quick and telling likenesses in a few lines of figures or objects that pleased him, absent-mindedly signed them, and then tossed them aside. This habit of his was so well-known that he was almost invariably followed by admirers of his work, who snapped up his sketches as soon as he had disappeared. I saw a good collection of them, drawn on the stationery of hotels from Hamburg to Taormina, and even on meat paper, go at auction in London a year or so ago for £1,000. When I knew him, Richards was a blond giant, careless of everything except his appearance. Jennings was an American socialist from Harvard who was ranging Europe to interview Jean Jaurès, Giovanni Papini, and Karl Liebknecht. He was exceedingly eccentric in his dress, had steel-grey eyes, the longest, sharpest nose I have ever seen, and wore glasses framed in tortoise-shell.

It had become my custom to pass two hours of every afternoon on this busy corner, first ordering tea with two brioches, and later a succession of absinthes, which I drank with sugar and water. In time I learned to do without the sugar, just as eventually I might have learned, in all probability, to do without the water, had I not been compelled to do without the absinthe[1]. I was enjoying my third pernod while my companions were dallying with whisky and soda. We were gossiping, and where in the world can one gossip to better advantage than on this busy corner, where every passerby offers a new opportunity? But, occasionally, the conversation slipped into alien channels.

How can the artist, Jennings, for instance, was asking, know that he is inspired, when neither the public nor the critics recognize inspiration? The question is equally interesting asked backwards. As a matter of fact, the artist is sometimes conscious that he is doing one thing, while he is acclaimed and appreciated for doing another. Columbus did not set out to discover America. Yes, there is often an accidental quality in great art and oftener still there is an accidental appreciation of it. In one sense art is curiously bound up with its own epoch, but appreciation or depreciation of its relation to that epoch may come in another generation. The judgment of posterity may be cruel to contemporary genius. In a few years we may decide that Richard Strauss is only another Liszt and Stravinsky, another Rubinstein.

Inspiration! Richards shrugged his broad shepherd's plaid shoulders. Inspiration! Artists, critics, public, clever men, and philistines monotonously employ that word, but it seems to me that art is created through memory out of experience, combined with a capacity for feeling and expressing experience, and depending on the artist's physical condition at the time when he is at work.

Are you, I asked, one of those who believes that a novelist must be unfaithful to his wife before he can write a fine novel, that a girl should have an amour with a prize-fighter before she can play Juliet, and that a musician must be a pederast before he can construct a great symphony?

Richards laughed.

No, he replied, I am not, but that theory is very popular. How many times I have heard it thundered forth! As a matter of fact, there is a certain amount of truth in it, the germ, indeed, of a great truth, for some emotional experience is essential to the artist, but why particularize? Each as he may!

I know a man, I went on, who doesn't believe that experience has anything to do with art at all. He thinks art is a matter of arrangement and order and form.

His art then, broke in Jennings, is epistemological rather than inspirational.

But what does he arrange? queried Richards. Surely incidents and emotions.

Not at all. He arranges objects, abstractions: colours and reaping-machines, perfumes and toys.

Long ago I read a book like that, Jennings went on. It was called Imperial Purple and it purported to be a history of the Roman Empire or the Roman Emperors. It was a strangely amusing book, rather like a clot of blood on a daisy or a faded pomegranate flower in a glass of buttermilk.

At this period, I avidly collected labels. Who wrote it? I asked.

I don't remember, but your description of your friend recalls the book. What is the name of your friend's book?

He hasn't written a book yet.

I see.

He is about to write it. He knows what he wants to do and he is collecting the materials. He is arranging the form.

What's it about? Jennings appeared to be interested.

Oh, it's about things. Whiffle told me, I suppose he was joking, that it would be about three hundred pages.

Richards set down his glass and in his face I recognized the portentous expression of a man about to be delivered of an epigram. It came: I dislike pine-apples, women with steatopygous figures, and men with a gift for paronomasia.

Jennings ignored this ignoble interruption. George Moore has written somewhere, he said, that if an author talks about _what_ he is going to write, usually he writes it, but when he talks about _how_ he is going to write it, that is the end of the matter. I wonder if this is true? I have never thought much about it before but I think perhaps it is. I think your friend will never write his book.

Richards interrupted again: Look at that maquereau. That's the celebrated French actor who went to America after a brilliant career in France in the more lucrative of his two professions, which ended in a woman's suicide. His history was well-known to the leading woman of the company with which he was to play in America, but she had never met him. At the first rehearsal, when they were introduced, she remarked, Monsieur, la connaissance est déjà faite! Turning aside, he boasted to his male companions, La gueuse! Avant dix jours je l'aurai enfilée! In a week he had made good his threat and in two weeks the poor woman was without a pearl.

He should meet Arabella Munson, said Jennings. She is always willing to pay her way. She fell in love with an Italian sculptor, or at any rate selected him as a suitable father for a prospective child. When she became pregnant, the young man actually fell ill with fear at the thought that he might be compelled to support both Arabella and the baby. He took to his bed and sent his mother as an ambassadress for Arabella's mercy. Choking with sobs, the old woman demanded what would be required of her son. My good woman, replied Arabella, dry your tears. I make it a point of honour never to take a penny from the fathers of my children. Not only do I support the children, often I support their fathers as well!

It was sufficiently warm. I lazily sipped my absinthe. The terrasse was crowded and there was constant movement; as soon as a table was relinquished, another group sat down in the empty chairs. Ephra Vogelsang, a pretty American singer, had just arrived with a pale young blond boy, whom I identified as Marcel Moszkowski, the son of the Polish composer. Presently, another table was taken by Vance Thompson and Ernest la Jeunesse, whose fat face was sprinkled with pimples and whose fat fingers were encased to the knuckles in heavy oriental rings. I bowed to Ephra and to Vance Thompson. On the sidewalk marched the eternal procession of newsboys, calling La Pa--trie! La Pa--trie! so like a phrase at the beginning of the second act of Carmen, old gentlemen, nursemaids, painted boys, bankers, Americans, Germans, Italians, South Americans, Roumanians, and Neo-Kaffirs. The carriages, the motors, the buses, formed a perfect maze on the boulevard. In one of the vehicles I caught a glimpse of another acquaintance.

That's Lily Hampton, I noted. She is the only woman who ever made Toscanini smile. You must understand, to appreciate the story, that she is highly respectable, the Mrs. Kendal of the opera stage, and the mother of eight or nine children. She never was good at languages, speaks them all with a rotten accent and a complete ignorance of their idioms. On this occasion, she was singing in Italian but she was unable to converse with the director in his native tongue and, consequently, he was giving her directions in French. He could not, however, make her understand what he wanted her to do. Again and again he repeated his request. At last she seemed to gather his meaning, that she was to turn her back to the footlights. What she asked him, however, ran like this: Est-ce que vous voulez mon derrière, maestro?

Now there was a diversion, an altercation at the further end of the terrasse, and a fluttering of feathered, flowered, and smooth-haired and bald heads turned in that direction. In the midst of this turbulence, I heard my name being called and, looking up, beheld Peter Whiffle waving from the impériale of a bus. I beckoned him to descend and join us and this he contrived to do after the bus had travelled several hundred yards on its way towards the Madeleine and I had abandoned the idea of seeing him return. But the interval gave me time to inform Richards and Jennings that this was the young author of whom I had spoken. Presently he came along, strolling languidly down the walk. He looked a bit tired, but he was very smartly dressed, with a gardenia as a boutonnière, and he seemed to vibrate with a feverish kind of jauntiness.

I _am_ glad to see you, he cried. I've been meaning to look you up. In fact if I hadn't met you I should have looked you up tonight. I'm burning for adventures. What are you doing?

I explained that I was doing nothing at all and introduced him to my friends. Jennings had an engagement. He explained that he had to talk at some socialist meeting, called our waiter, paid for his pile of saucers, and took his departure. Richards confessed that he was burning too.

What shall we do? asked the artist.

There's plenty to do, announced Peter, confidently; almost too much for one night. But let's hurry over to Serapi's, before he closes his shop.

We asked no questions. We paid our saucers, rose, and strolled along with Peter across the Place in front of the Opéra and down the Rue de la Chaussée-d'Antin until we stood before a tiny shop, the window of which was filled with bottles of perfume and photographs of actresses and other great ladies of various worlds and countries, all inscribed with flamboyant encomiums, relating to the superior merits of Serapi's wares and testifying to the superlative esteem in which Serapi himself was held.

Led by Peter, in the highest exuberance of nervous excitement but still, I thought, looking curiously tired, we passed within the portal. We found ourselves in a long narrow room, surrounded on two sides by glass cases, in which, on glass shelves, were arranged the products of the perfumer's art. At the back, there was a cashier's desk without an attendant; at the front, the show-window. In the centre of the room, the focus of a group of admiring women, stood a tawny-skinned Oriental--perhaps concretely an Arabian--with straight black hair and soft black eyes. His physique was magnificent and he wore a morning coat. Obviously, this was Serapi himself.

Peter, who had now arrived at a state in which he could with difficulty contain his highly wrought emotion--and it was at this very moment that I began to suspect him of collecting amusements along with his other objects--, in a whisper confirmed my conjecture. The ladies, delicately fashioned Tanagra statuettes in tulle and taffeta and chiffon artifices from the smartest shops, in hats on which bloomed all the posies of the season and posies which went beyond any which had ever bloomed, were much too attractive to be duchesses, although right here I must pause to protest that even duchesses sometimes have their good points: the Duchess of Talleyrand has an ankle and the Duchess of Marlborough, a throat. The picture, to be recalled later when Mina Loy gave me her lovely drawing of Eros being spoiled by women, was so pleasant, withal slightly ridiculous, that Richards and I soon caught the infection of Peter's scarcely masked laughter and our eyes, too, danced. We made some small pretence of examining the jars and bottles of Scheherazade, Ambre, and Chypre in the cases, but only a small pretence was necessary, as the ladies and their Arab paid not the slightest attention to us.

At length, following a brief apology, Serapi broke through the ranks and disappeared through a doorway behind the desk at the back of the room. As the curtains lifted, I caught a glimpse of a plain, business-like woman, too dignified to be a mere clerk, obviously the essential wife of the man of genius. He was gone only a few seconds but during those seconds the chatter ceased abruptly. It was apparent that the ladies had come singly. They were not acquainted with one another. As Serapi reentered, they chirped again, peeped and twittered their twiddling tune, the words of which were Ah! and Oh! In one hand, he carried a small crystal phial to which a blower was attached. He explained that the perfume was his latest creation, an hermetic confusion of the dangers and ardours of Eastern life and death, the concentrated essence of the unperfumed flowers of Africa, the odour of their colours, he elaborated, wild desert existence, the mouldering tombs of the kings of Egypt, the decaying laces of a dozen Byzantine odalisques, a fragrant breath or two from the hanging gardens of Babylon, and a faint suggestion of the perspiration of Istar. It is my reconstruction, the artist concluded, of the perfume which Ruth employed to attract Boaz! The recipe is an invention based on a few half-illegible lines which I discovered in the beauty-table book of an ancient queen of Georgia, perhaps that very Thamar whose portrait has been painted in seductive music by the Slav composer, Balakireff.

The ladies gasped. The fascinating Arab pressed the rubber bulb and blew the cloying vapours into their faces, adjuring them, at the same time, to think of Thebes or Haroun-Al-Raschid or the pre-Adamite sultans. The room was soon redolent with a heavy vicious odour which seemed to reach the brain through the olfactory nerves and to affect the will like ether.

He is the only man alive today, whispered Peter, not without reverence, who has taken Flaubert's phrase seriously. He passes his nights dreaming of larger flowers and stranger perfumes. I believe that he could invent a new vice!

Serapi went the round of the circle with his mystic spray, and the twitterings of the ladies softened to ecstatic coos, like the little coos of dismay and delight of female cats who feel the call of pleasure, when suddenly the phial fell from the Arab's unclasped hand, the hand itself dropped to his side, the brown skin became a vivid green, all tension left his body, and he crumbled into a heap on the floor. The ladies shrieked; there was a delicious, susurrous, rainbow swirl and billow of tulle and taffeta and chiffon; there was a frantic nodding and waving of sweet-peas, red roses, dandelions, and magenta bell-flowers; and eight pairs of white-gloved arms circled rhythmically in the air. The effect was worthy of the Russian Ballet and, had Fokine been present, it would doubtless have been perpetuated to the subsequent enjoyment of audiences at Covent Garden and the Paris Opéra.

Now, an assured and measured step was heard. From a room in the rear, the calm, practical presence entered, bearing a glass of water. The ladies moved a little to one side as she knelt before the recumbent figure and sprinkled the green face. Serapi almost immediately began to manifest signs of recovery; his muscles began to contract and his face regained its natural colour. We made our way into the open air and the warm western sunlight of the late afternoon. Peter was choking with laughter. I was chuckling. Richards was too astonished to express himself.

Life is sometimes artistic, Peter was saying. Sometimes, if you give it a chance and look for them, it makes patterns, beautiful patterns. But Serapi excelled himself today. He has never done anything like this before. I shall never go back there again. It would be an anticlimax.

We dined somewhere, where I have forgotten. It is practically the only detail of that evening which has escaped my memory. I remember clearly how Richards sat listening in silent amazement to Peter's arguments and decisions on dreams and circumstances, erected on bewilderingly slender hypotheses. He built up, one after another, the most gorgeous and fantastic temples of theory; five minutes later he demolished them with a sledge-hammer or a feather. It was gay talk, fancy wafted from nowhere, unimportant, and vastly entertaining. Indeed, who has ever talked like Peter?

We seemed to be in his hands. At any rate neither Richards nor I offered any suggestions. We waited to hear him tell us what we were to do. About 9 o'clock, while we were sipping our cognac, he informed us that our next destination would be La Cigale, a music hall on the outer circle of the boulevards in Montmartre, where there was to be seen a revue called, Nue Cocotte, of which I still preserve the poster, drawn by Maës Laïa, depicting a fat duenna, fully dressed, wearing a red wig and adorned with pearls, and carrying a lorgnette, a more plausible female, nude, but for a hat, veil, feather boa, and a pair of high boots with yellow tops over which protrude an inch or two of blue sock, and an English comic, in a round hat, a yellow checked suit, bearing binoculars, all three astride a remarkably vivid red hobby horse whose feet are planted in the attitude of bucking. The comic grasps the bobbed black tail of the nag in one hand and the long yellow braid of the female in the other.

The cocottes of the period were wont to wear very large bell-shaped hats. Lily Elsie, who was appearing in The Merry Widow in London, followed this fashion and, as a natural consequence, these head-decorations were soon dubbed, probably by an American, Merry Widow hats. Each succeeding day, some girl would appear on the boulevards surmounted by a greater monstrosity than had been seen before. Discussion in regard to the subject, editorial and epistolary, raged at the moment in the Paris journals.

Once we were seated in our stalls on the night in question, it became evident that the hat of the cocotte in front of Peter completely obscured his view of the stage. He bent forward and politely requested her to remove it. She turned and explained with equal politeness and a most entrancing smile that she could not remove her hat without removing her hair, surely an impossibility, Monsieur would understand. Monsieur understood perfectly but, under the circumstances, would Madame have any objection if Monsieur created a disturbance? Madame, her eyes shining with mirth, replied that she would not have the tiniest objection, that above all else in life she adored fracases. They were of a delight to her. At this juncture in the interchange of compliments the curtain rose disclosing a row of females in mauve dresses, bearing baskets of pink roses. Presently the compère appeared.

Chapeau! cried Peter, in the most stentorian voice I have ever heard him assume. Chapeau!

The spectators turned to look at the valiant American. Several heads nodded sympathy and approval.

Chapeau! Peter called again, pointing to the adorable little lady in front of him, who was enjoying the attention she had created. Her escort, on the other hand, squirmed a little.

The cry was now taken up by other unfortunate gentlemen in the stalls, who were placed in like situations but who had not had the courage to begin the battle. The din, indeed, soon gained such a degree of dynamic force that not one word of what was being said on the stage, not one note of the music, could be distinguished. Gesticulating figures stood up in every part of the theatre, shrieking and frantically waving canes. The compère advanced to the footlights and appeared to be addressing us, much in the manner of an actor attempting to stem a fire stampede in a playhouse, but, of course, he was inaudible. As he stepped back, a sudden lull succeeded to the tumult. Peter took advantage of this happy quiet to interject: Comme Mélisande, je ne suis pas heureux ici!

The spectators roared and screamed; the house rocked with their mirth. Even the mimes were amused. Now, escorted by two of his secretaries in elaborate coats decorated with much gold braid, the manager of the theatre appeared, paraded solemnly down the aisle to our seats and, with a bow, offered us a box, which we accepted at once and in which we received homage for the remainder of the evening. At last we could see the stage and enjoy the blond Idette Bremonval, the brunette Jane Merville, the comic pranks of Vilbert and Prince, and the Festival of the Déesse Raison.

The performance concluded, the pretty lady who had not removed her hat, commissioned her reluctant escort to inquire if we would not step out for a drink with them. The escort was not ungracious but, obviously, he lacked enthusiasm. The lady, just as obviously, had taken a great fancy to Peter. We went to the Rat Mort, where we sat on the terrasse, the lady gazing steadily at her new hero and laughing immoderately at his every sally. Peter, however, quickly showed that he was restless and presently he rose, eager to seek new diversions. We hailed a passing fiacre and jumped in, while the lady waved us pathetic adieux. Her companion seemed distinctly relieved by our departure. Peter was now in the highest animal spirits. All traces of fatigue had fled from his face. The horse which drew our fiacre was a poor, worn-out brute, like so many others in Paris, and the cocher, unlike so many others in Paris, was kind-hearted and made no effort to hasten his pace. We were crawling down the hill.

I will race you! cried Peter, leaping out (he told me afterwards that he had once undertaken a similar exploit with a Bavarian railway train).

Meet me at the Olympia Bar! he cried, dashing on ahead.

The cocher grunted, shook his head, mumbled a few unintelligible words to the horse, and we drove on more slowly than before. Peter, indeed, was soon out of sight.