Chapter IV: Part 4

The railroad train from Calais to Paris is a clean marvel of light gray upholstery, and white antimacassars sized like a pillow-sham. The cars are exceedingly comfortable and the whole ride a delight.

I reached the _Gare du Nord_ about seven o’clock in the evening, and, after a maddening experience with criminally imperturbable officials, I took a cab to my hotel.

Accustomed, all my life, to the few scattering cabs of New York City, I had thought London possessed a great many cabs; but Paris contains as many as London and New York put together. The French capital is paved with cabs, and of such a cheapness of fare that I soon discovered it was more economical to stay in them than to get out.

I well knew I must fight against the insistence of “first impressions”; but after all it _was_ Paris, and I had never been there before, and the ride from the station to the _Place Vendôme_ might therefore be allowed to thrill me a little.

Some of the streets seemed rather horrid, but after we swung into the Boulevard and came at last to the Vendôme Column, with a pale little French moon just appearing above it, I was ready to admit that Paris might go to my head, even as London went to my heart.

My chosen hotel, The Ritz, was once the old palace of the Castiglione, and still retains much of the palatial manner.

Exquisite in the modernness of its appointments, it possesses an atmosphere of historic France, and the combination comes perilously near perfection. The urbane proprietor, who looked like the hero of a French play, personally conducted me to my rooms and was solicitous for my welfare in the best of English. From my windows I could see _al fresco_ diners in a garden which looked like Marie Antoinette’s idea of Luna Park.

Noble old trees rose as high as the house, and from their branches hung great globes of vari-colored electric light. Statues guarded a fountain at one end, flower-beds surrounded the place, and at many tables gay humanity was toying with _chef d’œuvres_ of French cooking.

The scene allured me. I hastily donned a dinner gown, and descended to take my seat at an attractively-placed table.

As I was alone, this might in New York have seemed indiscreet; in London, at least undiscreet; but in Paris, being a guest of the house, and under the protection of the august and benignant proprietor, it all seemed the most natural proceeding in the world.

The dinner was a dream; I mean, a sort of comic opera dream, where lights and flowers and gayety made a chimerical effect of happiness.

Of course, this pause over night at the hotel was part of my journey to the week-end party.

The next day my hostess would send for me, but these vicissitudes of travel were not at all unpleasant.

As I finished my dinner, and sauntered through the delicately ornate salons, callers’ cards were brought me, and I was delighted to welcome some English friends who were passing through Paris on a motor tour.

“Come with us,” they said; “our car is at the door, and we will go out and see ‘Paris by night’ in our own way.”

Incongruous this, for Emily Emmins!

But my adaptability claimed me for its own, and, with what I fancied a French shrug of my shoulders, I mispronounced a French phrase of acquiescence, and declared myself ready to go.

Three stalwart Englishmen, and the dignified wife of one of them, might seem a strange party with which to visit Montmartre by night; but it was an ideal way to go. In the motor-car we could whiz from one ridiculous “Cabaret Unique” to another. We could look in at the absurd illusions of “Le Ciel,” we could jeer at the flimsy foolishness of “L’Enfer,” and make fun of its _attractions diaboliques_, yet all the time we were seeing the heart of Parisian Folly, and a very gay, good-humored, harmless little heart it is. Evil there might be, but none was observable, and the foolish young French people sat around with much the same air as that of young Americans at Coney Island.

The “Cabaret du Neant” is supposed to be a fearsome place, where guests sit around coffins and see ghosts. But so like substantial tables were the coffins, and so sociable and human the ghosts, that awe gave place to amusement.

Home we whizzed, through the poorly lighted streets, which are indeed an anachronism in Gay Paris By Night.

Next day came the great touring-car of my week-end hostess, to take me to her villa, at St. Germain-en-Laye.

The villa being a fascinating old French mansion, self-furnished, the house party being composed of most delightful people, the host and hostess past grand masters in the art of entertaining, the visit was, as might have been expected, merely a kaleidoscope of week-end delights.

One absorbing entertainment followed another, but perhaps the picture that remains most clearly in my memory is the dinner on the terrace. A French country-house terrace is so much more frivolous than an English one. The outlook, over a formal garden, of modified formality; the splashing little fountains here and there; the decorated table on the decorated terrace; the shaded candles, flowers, and foreign service; the French moon, that has such a sophisticated paleness; the birds singing French songs in what are doubtless ilex trees—all go to make a peculiar charm that no other country may ever hope to attain.

The days were devoted to motoring to Versailles, Fontainebleau, and through Paris itself, and by this subtle method, one could sight-see without realizing it. To motor over to Chantilly, for the sole purpose of feeding the carp, is a different matter from seeing “sights which should on no account be omitted”; and to go with one’s host for a day’s run among the tiny French villages is a personally conducted tour with the sting entirely extracted.

The week-end over, I must needs pause a day or two in Paris, to rest myself on my journey back to London.

The shops offered wonderful attractions in the way of souvenirs to take to the dear ones at home. For the value of a foreign-bought “souvenir” lies in the fact of its non-existence in American shops, and such are hard to find, indeed. For the novelty in London to-day is the “reduced goods” in the New York department store to-morrow.

Moreover, the shops contained feminine raiment of wonderful glory! Only the fear of my “first impressions” of our American custom-house officers prevented my realizing my wildest dreams of extravagance.

Parisian clothes are marked by that quality which the London sales-people call “dynety”—they having no more idea of the meaning than of the pronounciation of the word.

But the Parisian woman, from the richest to the poorest, is first of all dainty; after that, correct, _chic_, modish—what you will.

And the French money is so easy to compute. My sovereign rule is to multiply by two. If the price be in francs multiply by two, shift a decimal point, and you have dollars. If centimes, multiply by two, decimal point again, and you have cents.

This simple rule made Paris shopping easy.

I had determined, as this time Paris was a means and not an end, being merely incidental to my week-end trip, I would not go into the galleries, and perhaps become unduly attached to something I might find there.

A casual visit to the Louvre let me go through several rooms of pictures and statues unmoved, when suddenly I met my Waterloo.

All unexpectedly I came upon the _Venus of Milo_. It was a revelation. The casts and photographs I had hitherto seen of it I now discovered to be no more like the original statue than the moon is like the sun.

The form, perhaps, is not so inadequately represented, but the face, as shown in cast or picture, is a sadly futile attempt at imitation.

The real _Venus_ has the most marvellous face in the world. There is an ineffable beauty of feature, and an exquisite repose of expression, that betokens no one affection, but the glorification of all that is great and beautiful.

But the fascination is unexplainable. I only know that into that wonderful face I could gaze for hours; but never again do I want to see a reproduction of it, of any sort.

In the Louvre, too, I found the _Mona Lisa_. Here again I had been misled by photographs and “art prints,” and was all unprepared for the witchery of that baffling, bewildering smile. By a queer correlation of ideas, my mind reverted to the _Laughing Cavalier_, and I wondered if these two were smiling at the same thought.

Undesirous of seeing more at this time, I returned to my open, victoria-like cab. Those foolish Paris cabs! They seem so exactly like the vehicle in which Bella Wilfer elegantly sat, when she begged her parent, “Loll, ma, loll!”

But they are fine to see out of, and a city like Paris, made for show, should have cabs of wide outlook.

Paris is an achievement. Its coherent, consequent civic beauty ranks it among the seven beauties of the world. It is as systematically and methodically laid out as Philadelphia—but with a difference!

It is discreet and tactful, and ever puts its best foot foremost, the other probably being down at heel.

It is trim and tripping, where London is solidly lumbering,—but, give me London!

Paris is adorable; London is lovable. Paris is bewitching; London is satisfying.

Paris is to London as lime-light unto sunlight, and as absinthe unto wine. But as the very essence of Paris, is ephemeral, so the nature of London makes for perpetuity; and London is, of all things, a place to go back to.

* * * * *

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* * * * *

Transcriber’s Notes:

Hyphenation and archaic spellings have been retained as in the original. Punctuation and type-setting errors have been corrected without note.

End of Project Gutenberg's The Emily Emmins Papers, by Carolyn Wells