Chapter V: Prologue (3)

Therefore, the tourist will tell you, Paris is not satisfactory. Because to his greedy curiosity she does not open her soul as she does the gates of her art treasures and museums, he pronounces her shallow, mercenary, heartless, even wicked. As her frankness in some things is foreign to his hypocrisy, as her complex unmorality resists his facile analysis, he grasps what he can of her; and goes away annoyed. Really to know Paris is to offer in advance a store of tolerance for her inconsistencies, patience for her whims, and the sincere desire to learn finally to see behind her mask--not to snatch it rudely from her face.

But this cannot be done in the curt fortnight which generally limits the casual visitor’s acquaintance. Months and years must be spent, if true knowledge of the City of Light is to be won. We can only, in our brief survey of its more significant phases, indicate a guide to further study of a place and people well worth a wider scrutiny.

The most prejudiced will not deny that Paris is beautiful; or that there is about her streets and broad, tree-lined avenues a graciousness at once dignified and gay. Stand, as the ordinary tourist does on his first day, in the flowering square before the Louvre; in the foreground are the fountains and bright tulip-bordered paths of the Tuileries--here a glint of gold, there a soft flash of marble statuary, shining through the trees; in the centre the round lake where the children sail their boats. Beyond spreads the wide sweep of the Place de la Concorde, with its obelisk of terrible significance, its larger fountains throwing brilliant jets of spray; and then the trailing, upward vista of the Champs Elysées to the great triumphal Arch: yes, even to the most indifferent, Paris is beautiful.

To the subtler of appreciation, she is more than beautiful: she is impressive. For behind the studied elegance of architecture, the elaborate simplicity of gardens, the carefully lavish use of sculpture and delicate spray, is visible the imagination of a race of passionate creators--the imagination, throughout, of the great artist. One meets it at every turn and corner, down dim passageways, up steep hills, across bridges, along sinuous quays: the masterhand and its “infinite capacity for taking pains.” And so marvellously do its manifestations of many periods through many ages combine to enhance one another that one is convinced that the genius of Paris has been perennial; that St. Genevieve, her godmother, bestowed it as an immortal gift when the city was born.

From earliest days every man seems to have caught the spirit of the man who came before, and to have perpetuated it; by adding his own distinctive yet always harmonious contribution to the gradual development of the whole. One built a stately avenue; another erected a church at the end; a third added a garden on the other side of the church, and terraces leading up to it; a fourth and fifth cut streets that should give from the remaining two sides into other flowery squares with their fine edifices. And so from every viewpoint, and from every part of the entire city, today we have an unbroken series of vistas--each one different and more charming than the last.

History has lent its hand to the process, too; and romance--it is not an insipid chain of flowerbeds we have to follow, but the holy warriors of Saint Louis, the roistering braves of Henry the Great, the gallant Bourbons, the ill-starred Bonapartes. These as they passed have left their monuments; it may be only in a crumbling old chapel or ruined tower, but there they are: eloquent of days that are dead, of a spirit that lives forever staunch in the heart of the fervent French people.

It comes over one overwhelmingly sometimes, in the midst of the careless gaiety of the modern city: the old, ever-burning spirit of rebellion and savage strife that underlies it all; and that can spring to the surface now on certain memorable days, with a vehemence that is terrifying. Look across the Pont Alexandre, at the serene gold dome of the Invalides, surrounded by its sleepy barracks. Suddenly you are in the fires and awful slaughter of Napoleon’s wars. The flower of France is being pitilessly cut down for the lust of one man’s ambition; and when that is spent, and the wail of the widowed country pierces heaven with its desolation, a costly asylum is built for the handful of soldiers who are left--and the great Emperor has done his duty!

Or you are walking through the Cité, past the court of the Palais de Justice. You glance in, carelessly--memory rushes upon you--and the court flows with blood, “so that men waded through it, up to the knees!” In the tiny stone-walled room yonder, Marie Antoinette sits disdainfully composed before her keepers; though her face is white with the sounds she hears, as her friends and followers are led out to swell that hideous river of blood.

A pretty, artificial city, Paris; good for shopping, and naughty amusements, now and then. History? Oh yes, of course; but all that’s so dry and uninspiring, and besides it happened so long ago.

Did it? In your stroll along the Rue Royale, among the jewellers’ and milliners’ shops and Maxim’s, glance up at the Madeleine, down at the obelisk in the Place de la Concorde. Little over a hundred years ago, this was the brief distance between life and death for those who one minute were dancing in the “Temple of Victory,” the next were laying their heads upon the block of the guillotine. Can you see, beyond the shadowy grey pillars of the Temple, that brilliant circling throng within? The reckless-laughing ballet girl in her shrine as “Goddess,” her worshippers treading their wild measures among the candles and crucifixes and holy images, as though they are pursued? Look--a grim presence is at the door. He enters, lays a heavy hand upon the shoulder of a young and beautiful dancer. She looks into his face, and smiles. The music never stops, but goes more madly on; as the one demanded makes a low _révérence_, then rising, throws a kiss over her shoulder to her comrades who in turn salute her; calls a gay “Adieu!” and with the smile still terrible upon her lips--is gone.

Ah, but the French are different now, you say. Those were the aristocrats, the _vieille noblesse_; these modern Republicans are of another breed. And yet the same blood flows in their veins, the same scornful courage animates them--who, for example, leads the world in aviation?--and on days like the fourteenth of July (the anniversary of the storming of the Bastille), the common people at least show a patriotism no less fiery if less ferocious than they showed in 1789. Let us see if they are so different after all.

The first charge against the French invariably is that of artificiality. Anglo-Saxons admit them to be charming, of a delightful wit and keen intelligence; but, they immediately add, how deep does it go? Superficially, the Parisian is vastly agreeable; courteous to the point of extravagance, an accomplished conversationalist, even now and then with a flash of the profound. Probe him, and what do you find? A cynical, world-weary degenerate, who will laugh at you when your back is turned, and make love to your wife before your very eyes!

And why not? You should appreciate the compliment to your good taste. It is when he begins to make love behind one’s back that one must beware of one’s French friend; for he is a finished artist at the performance, and women know it, and are prepared in advance to be subdued. He is by no means a degenerate, however, the average Frenchman; he has to work too hard, and besides he has not the money degeneracy costs. He may have his “_petite amie_,” generally he has; but quite as generally she is a wholesome, well-behaved little person,--a dressmaker in a small way, or _vendeuse_ in a shop--content to drink a bock with him in the evening, at their favourite café, and on Sundays to hang on his arm during their excursion to St. Germain or Meudon. Just as a very small percentage of New Yorkers are those who dwell in Wall Street and corner stocks, so a very small percentage of Parisians are those who feed _louis_ to night restaurants and carouse till morning with riotous demi-mondaines.

It is a platitude that foreigners are the ones who support the immoral resorts of Paris; yet no foreigner seems to care to remember the platitude. The best way to convince oneself of it forever is to visit a series of these places, and take honest note of their personnel. The employés will be found to be French; but ninety-eight per cent. of the patrons are English, German, Italian, Spanish, and North and South American. The retort is made that nevertheless the Parisians started such establishments in the first place. They did; but only after the stranger had brought his crude sensuality to their variety theatres and night cafés, stripping the first of their racy wit, the second of their rollicking _bonhomie_, taking note only of the license underlying both--and blatantly revelling in it. Then it was that the ever-alert commercial sense of the Frenchman awoke to a new method of making money out of foreigners; and the vulgar night-restaurant of today had its beginning.

But not only in the matter of degeneracy is the common analysis of the Parisian open to refutation; his inveterate cynicism also comes up for doubt. The attitude that calls forth this mistaken conclusion on the part of those not well acquainted with French character is more or less the attitude of every instinctively dramatic nature: a kind of impersonal detachment, which causes the individual to appreciate situations and events first as bits of drama, _seen_ in their relation to himself. Thus, during the recent scandal of the motor bandits, I have heard policemen laugh heartily at some clever trick of evasion on the part of the criminals; only to see them turn purple with rage the next minute, on realizing the insult to their own intelligence.

A better example is the story of the little _midinette_ who, though starving, would not yield to her former _patron_ (desirous also of being her lover), and whom the latter shot through the heart as she was hurrying along the Quai Passy late at night. “_Quel phenomène_!” she exclaimed, with a faint shrug, as her life ebbed away in the corner _brasserie_; “to be shot, while on the way to drown oneself--_c’est inoui_!” The next moment she was dead. And all she had to say was, “what a phenomenon--it’s unheard of!”

Is this cynicism? Or is it not rather the characteristic impersonality of the histrionic temper, which causes the artist, even in death, to gaze at herself and at the scene, as it were, from the critical vantage of the wings? And the light shrug--which so often grounds the idea of heartlessness, or simply of shallow frivolity, in the judgment of the stranger--look closer, and you will see it hiding a brave stoicism that this race of born actors makes every effort to conceal. The French throughout embody so complex a combination of Latin ardour, Spartan endurance, and Greek ideality as to render them extremely difficult of any but the most superficial comprehension. They laugh at things that make other people shudder; they take fire at things that leave other people cold; they burn with a white flame for beauties other people never see. As a great English writer has said, “below your level, they’re above it:--and a paradox is at home with them!”

But I do not think that they are always ridiculing the foreigner, when the latter is uncomfortably conscious of their smiling glance upon him. There are travelling types at whom everyone laughs, and these delight the Frenchman’s keen humour; but the ordinary stranger has become so commonplace to Paris that, unless he or she is especially distinguished, no one takes any notice. Here, however, we have in a nutshell the reason for that smile that sometimes irritates the foreigner: it is often a smile of pure admiration. The great artist’s eye knows no distinction of nationality or an iota of provincial prejudice. When it lights upon ugliness, it is disgusted--or amused, if the ugliness has a touch of the comic; when, on the other hand, it lights upon beauty--and how instant it is to spy out the most obscure trait of this--enthusiasm is kindled, regardless of kind or race, and the _vif_ French features break into a smile of pleased appreciation. Here, he would say, is someone who contributes to the scene; someone who helps to make, not mar, the radiant _ensemble_ we are striving for.

Paris, as no other city in the world, offers a playhouse of brilliant and charming _mise-en-scène_; and gives the visitor subtly to understand that she expects him to live up to it. Otherwise she has no interest in him. For the well-tailored Englishman, the striking _Américaine_, for anyone and everyone who can claim title to that supreme quality, _chic_, Paris is ready to open her arms and cry kinship. Those whom she favours, however, are held strictly to the mark of her fine standard of the exquisite; and if they falter--oblivion.

“I am never in Paris two hours,” said an American friend of mine, “before I begin to perk and prink, and furbish up everything I have. One feels that each man and woman in the street knows the very buttons of one’s gloves, and quality of one’s stockings; and that every detail of one’s costume _must_ be right.” Many people have voiced the same impression: as of being consciously and constantly “on view”--before spectators keenly critical. The curtain seems to rise on oneself alone in the centre of the stage, and never to go down until the last pair of those appraising eyes has passed on.

It is a very different appraisement, however, from the “inventory stare” of Fifth Avenue. Here, not money value but beauty of line--blend of colour, grace, _verve_--is the criterion. And the modestly gowned little _midinette_ receives as many admiring glances as the gorgeous demi-mondaine, if only she has contrived an original cut to her frock, or tied a clever, new kind of bow to her hat. Novelty, novelty, is the cry of the exacting _artiste_; and who obeys wins approval--who has exhausted imagination is laid upon the shelf.

But, again, this is not the shifting, impermanent temper of Madame New York; it is the fickle variability of the great artist, exercising her eternal prerogative: caprice. She accepts a fashion one week, discards it the next for one newer; throws that aside two days later, and demands to know where everyone’s ideas have gone. It is not that she is pettish, but simply that she is used to being slaved for, and to being pleased--by something different, something more charming every hour. Infinite pains are taken to produce the merest trifle she may fancy. Look from your window into the rows of windows up and down the street, or that line your court: everywhere people are sewing, fitting minute bits of delicate stuffs into a pattern, threading tiny pearls to make a border, straining their eyes in dark work-rooms,--toiling indefatigably--to create some fragile, lovely thing that will be snatched up, worn once or twice, and tossed aside, forgotten for the rest of time.

Yet no one of the workers seems to grow impatient or disheartened over this; the faces bent absorbedly over their tasks are bright with interest, alert and full of eagerness to make something that will captivate the difficult mistress, if only for an hour. They may never see her--when she comes to inspect their handiwork, they are shut behind a dingy door; at best, they may only catch a glimpse of her as she enters her carriage, or sweeps past them outside some brilliant theatre of her pleasure. But one cries to another: “She’s wearing my fichu!” The other cries back: “And I draped her skirt!” And supreme contentment illumines each face, for each has helped towards the goddess’s perfection--and they are satisfied.

As I heard one unimportant little _couturière_ remark, “_Dieu merci_, in Paris we _all_ are artists!” And so they all are responsible for the finished success of the star. One cannot help contrasting this ideal that animates the most insignificant of them--the ideal of sheer beauty, towards which they passionately toil to attain--with the stolid “what-do-I-get-out-of-it” attitude of the Anglo-Saxon artisan. French working people are poorly paid, they have little joy in life beyond the joy of what they create with their fingers; yet there is about them a fine contentment, an almost radiance, that is inspiring only to look upon. When they do have a few francs for pleasure, you will find them at the _Français_ or the _Odéon_--the best to be had is their criterion; and when the theatres are out of their reach, on Sundays and holidays they crowd the galleries and museums, exchanging keenly intelligent comment as they scrutinize one masterpiece after another.

The culture of the nation, at least, is not artificial; but deep-rooted as no other race can claim: in the poorest _ouvrier_, no less than in the most polished gentleman, there exists the insatiable instinct for what is fine and worthy to be assimilated. And if the prejudiced concede this perhaps, but add that it remains an intellectual instinct always--an artistic instinct, while the heart of French people is callous and cold, one may suggest that there are two kinds of artists: those who give away their hearts in their art, and those who jealously hide theirs lest the vulgar tear it to pieces.

And the _great_ artiste, however gracious she may be for us, however kind may be her smile, never lets us forget that we are before a curtain; which, though she may draw it aside and give us brief glimpses of her wonder, conceals some things too precious to be shown.

II

ON HER EVERYDAY PERFORMANCE

Sight-seeing in Paris must be like looking at the Venus of Milo on a roll of cinematograph films--an experience too harrowing to be remembered. I am sure it is the better part of discretion to forswear Baedeker, and without system just to “poke round.” Thus one catches the artists, in the multiform moods of their life, as ordinary beings; and stumbles across historic wonders enough into the bargain.

Really to take Paris unawares, one must get up in the morning before she does, and slip out into the street when the white-bloused baker’s boy and a sleepy _cocher_ or two, with their drowsy, dawdling horses, are all the life to be seen. One walks along the empty boulevards, down the quiet Rue de la Paix, into the stately serenity of the Place Vendôme and on across the shining Seine into the grey, ancient stillness of the crooked Rue du Bac. And in this early morning calm, of solitary spaces and clear sunshine, fresh-sprinkled streets and gently fluttering trees, one meets with a new and altogether different Paris from the dazzling, exotic city one knows by day and at night.

Absent is the snort and reckless rush of motors, the insistent jangling of tram and horse’s bells, the rumble of carts and clip-clop of their Norman stallions’ feet; absent the hurrying, kaleidoscopic throngs who issue from the subway stations and fill the thoroughfares; absent even that familiar smell-of-the-city which in Paris is a fusion of gasoline, wet asphalt, and the faint fragrance of women’s _sachet_: this virgin morning peace is without odour save the odour of fresh leaves, without noise, without the bustle of moving people. The city stretches its broad arms North and South, East and West, like a serene woman in the embrace of tranquil dreams; and suggests a soft and beautiful repose.

But, while still you are drinking deep of it, she stirs--opens her eyes. A distant cry is heard: “_E-e-eh, pommes de terre-eeeeh!_” And then another: “_Les petites fraises du bois! Les petites fraises!_” And the cries come nearer, and there is the sound of steps and the creak of a hand-cart; and Paris rubs her eyes and wakes up--she must go out and buy potatoes!

The same fat, brown-faced woman with the same two dogs--one pulling the cart, one running fussily along-side--has sold potatoes in the same streets round the Place Vendôme, ever since I can remember. For years, her lingering vibrant cry has roused this part of Paris to the first sign of day. And while she is making change, and gossiping with the concierge, and the smaller dog is sniffing impatiently round her skirts, windows are opened, gratings groan up, at the corner some workmen call to one another--and the day is begun.

While the streets are still comparatively empty, let us follow the first abroad--the little _midinette_ (shop-girl) and her mother--to mass. They will choose one of the old, unfashionable churches, like St. Roch or _La Trinité_; though on Sundays they go to the Madeleine to hear the music, and revel in splendid pomp and pageantry. France at heart is agnostic; a nation of fatalists, if anything. But the vivid French imagination is held in thrall by the colour and mystic ritual of the Catholic church: by the most perfect in ceremonial and detail of all religions. When the curtain rises on the full magnificence of gorgeous altar, golden-robed bishop and officiating priests; when, in accompaniment to the sonorous _Aves_, exquisite music peals forth, and the whole is blended, melted together by the soft light of candles, the subtle haze of incense: into French faces comes that ecstasy with which they greet the perfect in all its manifestations. They are _dévotes_ of beauty in the religious as in every other scene.

But now our _midinette_ and her _maman_ enter a dusky unpretentious old church, where quietly they say their prayers and listen to the monotonous chanting of a single priest, reading matins in a little corner chapel. The two women cross themselves, and go out. In the _Place_, the younger one stops to spend twopence for a spray of muguet--that delicate flower (the lily-of-the-valley) that is the special property of the _midinettes_ of Paris, and that they love. On their Saint Catherine’s Day (May 1st), no girl is without a little bunch of it as a “_porte-bonheur_” for her love affairs during the next year.

But the _midinette_ calls, “_au ’voir_”; and the _maman_ returns, “_à ce soir_!” And they disappear, the one to her shop, the other to her duties as concierge or storekeeper, and we are left in the Place alone. What about coffee? Let us take it here at the corner brasserie, where the old man with his napkin tucked in his chin is crumbling “crescents” and muttering imprecations at the government--which he attacks through the _Matin_ or _Figaro_ spread upon his knees. A young man, with melancholy black moustaches and orange boots, is the only other client at this early hour. He refuses to eat, though a _café complet_ is before him; and looks at his watch, and sighs. We know what is the matter with _him_.

Considerate of the lady who is late, we choose a table on the other side--all are outdoors of course, in this Springtime of the year--and devote ourselves to discussing honey and rolls and the season’s styles in hosiery, which young persons strolling towards the boulevard benevolently offer for our inspection. Occasionally they pause, and graciously inquire if we “have need of someone?” And on our replying--with the proper mixture of apology and admiration--that all our wants seem to be attended to, pass on with a shrug of resignation.

Motor-buses are whirring by now, and a maze of _fiacres_, taxis, delivery-boy’s bicycles, and heavy trucks skid round the slippery corner in dangerous confusion. The traffic laws of Paris are of the vaguest, and policemen are few and far between; all at once, the Place seems unbearably thick and full of noise. We call for our _addition_, exchange complaisances with the waiter, and depart--just as the young man with the orange boots, with a cry of “_enfin!_” tucks the hand of a bewitchingly pretty young lady (doubtless a mannequin) within his arm, and starts towards the Rue de la Paix.

The Rue de la Paix at half past nine in the morning does not intrigue us. We prefer to wait for it until the sensational _heure des rendez-vous_, in the evening. Why not jump into a cab and bowl leisurely out to the Bois? It will be cool there, and quiet during the hour before the fashionable _cavaliers_ come to ride. With a wary eye for a horse of reasonable solidity, we engage a blear-eyed Gaul to tow us to the Porte Dauphine. We like this Gaul above other Gauls, because his anxious flop-eared dog sitting next to him on the box gives every sign of liking him. And though, even before we have turned into the Champs Elysées, there have been three blood-curdling rows between cabby and various colleagues who presumed to occupy a place in the same street; though whips have been brandished and such ferocious epithets as “brother-in-law of a bantam!” “son of a pigeon-toed hen!” have been brandished without mercy by our remorseless Jehu, we take the reassuring word of his dog’s worshipping brown eyes that he is not a bad sort after all.

He cracks us out the Champs Elysées at a smart pace; yet we have time to gloat over the beauties of this loveliest of all avenues: its spacious gardens, its brilliant flower-plots, its quaint little _guignols_ and donkey carriages for children. Vendors of jumping bunnies and squeaking pigs thread in and out the shady trees, showing their fascinating wares; and one does not wonder at the swarm of small people with their bright-ribboned nurses, who flock round to admire--and to buy.

This part of the avenue--from the Concorde to the Rond-Point--is given over to children; and all kinds of amusements, wise and unwise, are prepared for them. But by far the most popular are the _guignols_: those theatres-in-little, where Punch and Judy go through their harassing adventures, to the accompaniment of “_c’est joli, ça!_” and “_tiens, que c’est chic!_”; uttered by enthusiastic small French throats, seconded by applauding small French hands. For in Paris even the babies have their appreciation for the drama that is offered them before they can talk; and show it so spontaneously, yet emphatically, that one is arrested by their vehemence.

But we can take in these things only in passing, for Jehu and the flop-eared dog are carrying us on up the suavely mounting avenue, beyond the haughty portals of fashionable hotels and automobile houses _de luxe_; round the stately Arc de Triomphe, and into the Avenue du Bois. Here a sprinkling of governesses and their charges, old ladies, and lazy young men are ranged along in the stiff luxury of penny chairs. On a Sunday we might stop and take one ourselves, to watch the parade of toilettes and the lively Parisian _jeunesse_ at its favourite game of “_faire le flirt_”; but this morning the terrace is half asleep, and above it the houses of American millionaires and famous ladies of the demi-monde turn forbidding closed shutters to our inquiring gaze. Jehu speeds us past them, and we alight at the Porte Dauphine, the principal entrance to the Bois.

Green grass, the glint of a lake, broad, sandy roads and intimate slim _allées_ greet us, once within the gates; while all round and overhead are the slender, grey-green French poplars, fashioned into gracious avenues and seductive pathways, with its gay little restaurant at the end. Of all styles and architecture are these last: Swiss châlets, Chinese pagodas, Japanese tea-houses, and the typical French _pavillon_; they have one common trait, however--that of serving atrocious food at a fabulous price. Let us abjure them, and wander instead along the quite expansive lake, to the rocks and miniature falls of _Les Rochers_.

All through the Bois one is struck with the characteristic French passion for vistas. There is none of the natural wildness of Central Park, or the uninterrupted sweep of green fields that gives the charm of air and openness to the parks of London; but--though here in Paris we are in a “wood”--everywhere there is the elaborate simplicity of French landscape gardening: trees cut into tall Gothic arches, or bent into round, tunnel-like curves; brush trimmed precisely into formal box hedges; paths leading into avenues, that in turn lead into other avenues--so that before, behind, and on every side there is that prolonged silver-grey perspective. One sees the same thing at Versailles and St. Cloud: in every French forest, for that matter. The artist cannot stay her hand, even for the hand of nature.

And so, in the Bois, rocks have been built into grottos, and trickling waterfalls trained to form cascades above them; and little lakes and islands have been inserted--everything, anything, that the artistic imagination could conceive, to enhance the sylvan scene for the critical actors who frequent it. Which reminds us that these last will be on view now--it is eleven o’clock, their hour for riding and the promenade. So let us leave _Les Rochers_, and the greedy goats of the _Pré Catalan_, and hasten back to the Avenue des Acaçias and the famous Sentier de Vertu.

Here, a _chic_ procession of _élégantes_ and their admirers are strolling along, laughing and chatting as they come upon acquaintances, forming animated little groups, only to break up and wander on to join others. Cavaliers in smart English coats, or the dashing St. Cyr uniform, canter by; calling gay greeting to friends, for whose benefit they display an elaborately careless bit of clever horsemenship _en passant_. Ladies and “half-ladies” in habits of startling yet somehow alluring cut and hue--heliotrope and brick pink are among the favourites--allow their mounts to saunter lazily along the allées, while their own modestly veiled eyes spy out prey. They are viewed with severity by the _bonne bourgeoise_ of the tortoise-shell lorgnettes and heavy moustache; who keeps her limousine within impressive calling distance, while she, with her fat poodle under her arm, waddles along ogling the beaux.

A doughty regiment of these there are: young men with marvellous waists and eager, searching eyes; middle-aged men with figures “well preserved,” and eyes that make a desperate effort at eagerness, but only succeed in looking tired; and then the old gallants, waxed and varnished, and gorgeously immaculate, from sandy toupée to gleaming pointed shoes--the three hours they have spent with the barber and in the scrupulous hands of their valet have not been in vain. They do the honours of the _Sentier_, with a courtliness that brings back Louis Quatorze and the days of Ninon and the lovely Montespan.

But there are as lovely--and perhaps as naughty?--ladies among these who saunter leisurely down the grey-green paths today. In wonderfully simple, wonderfully complicated _toilettes de matin_, they stroll along in pairs--or again (with an oblique glance over the shoulder, oh a quite indifferent glance), carelessly alone with two or three little dogs. I read last week in one of the French illustrated papers a serious treatise on ladies’ dogs. It was divided into the three categories: “Dogs for morning,” “Dogs for afternoon,” “Dogs of ceremony”--meaning full-dress dogs. And the article gravely discussed the correct canine accessory that should be worn with each separate costume of the _élégante’s_ elaborate day. It omitted to add, however, the incidental value of these costly scraps of fuzz, as chaperones. But with a couple of dogs, as one pretty lady softly assured me, one can go anywhere, feeling _quite_ secure; and one’s husband, too--for of course he realizes that the sweet little beasts _must_ be exercised!

So the conscientious ladies regularly “exercise” them; and if sometimes, in their exuberance, Toto and Mimi escape their distressed young mistresses, and must be brought back by a friend who “chanced” to be near at hand--who can cavil? And if the kind restorer walks a little way with the trio he has reunited, or sits with them for a few moments under the trees, why not? They are always three--Toto and Mimi and the lady--and one’s friends who may happen to pass know for themselves how hard dogs are to keep in hand!

So we have a series of gay, well-dressed couples wandering down the intimate allées, or scattered in the white iron chairs within the trees: a very different series from those who will be here at eleven o’clock tonight--and every night. The Bois is far too large to be policed, and the grotesque shapes that haunt it after dark--crouching, low-browed figures that slink along in the shadows, greedy for any sort of prey--make one shudder, even from the security of a closed cab. All about are the brilliant, bright-lit restaurants with their crowds of feasting sybarites; yet at the very door of these--waiting to fall upon them if they take six steps beyond the threshold--is that grisly, desperate band, some say of Apaches, others say monsters worse than those.

At all events, it is better in the evening to turn one’s eyes away from the shadowy paths, and towards the amusing tableaux to be seen in passing fiacres and taxis. To the more reserved Anglo-Saxon, French frankness of demonstration in affairs of the affections comes always as a bit of a shock. To see a lady reclining against the arm of a gentleman, as the two spin along the boulevard in an open horse-cab; to watch them, quite oblivious of the world looking on, ardently turn and kiss one another: this is a disturbing and meanly provocative scene to put before the susceptible American. No one else pays any attention to it--they have acted that scene so many times themselves; and when, in the friendly darkness of the Bois at night, all lingering discretion is thrown to the winds, and behind the cabby’s broad, habituated back anything and everything in the way of fervid love-making goes on--who cares? Except to smile sympathetically, and return to his own affair, more ardently than ever. The silhouettes one sees against taxi-windows and the dust-coloured cushions of _fiacres_ are utterly demoralizing to respectable American virtue.

Let us turn on the light of day, therefore, and in a spasm of prudence mount a penny-bus that traffics between the Étoile and the Latin Quarter. It is a flagrant _faux-pas_ to arrive in the Latin Quarter by way of anything more sumptuous than a penny-bus or a twopenny tram. It shrieks it from the cobbles, that one is a “_nouveau_”; and that, in the Quarter, is a disgrace too horrible to be endured.

We rock across the Pont Royal, then, on the precarious upper story of an omnibus; and wind along the narrow Rue du Bac, which, since our visit of early morning, has waked to fitful life in its old plaster and print shops. Second-hand dealers of all kinds flourish here, and the medley of ancient books, musty reliquaries, antique jewelry, and battered images minus such trifles as a nose or ear, makes the street into one continuous curiosity-shop. Until one reaches the varnish and modern bustle of the Bon Marché stores; then, when we have been shot through the weather-beaten slit of the Rue des Saints Pères, I insist that we shall climb down and go on foot up quaint, irregular Notre-Dame-des-Champs to the garden where I spent many joyous days as a student.

It is in a crooked little street which runs breathlessly for a block between Notre-Dame-des-Champs and the Boulevard Montparnasse--and there stops; leaving you with the insinuation that it has done its best to squeeze in on this frazzled boundary of the old Quarter, and that more cannot be expected of it. On one side of the abrupt block, rambles the one-time _hôtel_ of the Duchesse de Chevreuse; _intrigante_, cosmopolitan, irresponsible lover of adventure, who kept Louis XIII’s court in a hubbub with her pranks and her inordinate influence over Queen Anne.

The grey court that has seen the trysts of Chalais, Louvigni, even of the great Richelieu himself, rests still intact; and they say the traditional secret passage also--leading from a hidden recess in the garden to the _grands palais_. But that is only legend (which, by some vagary, still clings to the feelers of the practical twentieth century mind), and I have never seen it. The _hôtel_ is now covered yearly with a neat coat of yellow paint, and used as an apartment house; crowded by the usual rows of little Quarter shops: a cobbler’s, a blanchissage, a goldsmith’s on the East wing; the beaten-down door of an antiquary on the West: until its outraged painted bricks seem to bulge out over the thread of a side-walk, in continual effort to rub noses with the _hôpital_ opposite--the only other house of any age in the street.

One peep at the garden--and you will admit it is worth it, with its lovely plaintive iris, its pale wistaria, its foolish pattering fountain--and we turn towards the Boulevard and lunch. I have said this bit of a street along which we are walking is on the boundary of the old Quarter. Alas, in these days there is no Quarter. One tries to think there is, particularly if one is a new-comer to the Left Bank, and enthusiastic; but one learns all too soon that there is not. There are students, yes, and artists; and the cafés and paintshops and pretty grisettes that go with students and artists. But the quarter of Rudolph and Mimi, of Trilby and Svengali: can you find it in steam-heated apartments, where ladies in Worth gowns pour tea? Or in the thick blue haze about the bridge and poker games at the Café du Dôme?

The Quarter has passed; there remains only its name. And that we should use with a muttered “forgive us our trespasses”; for it is the name of romance, shifted onto commonplaceness.

Yet one can still enjoy there the romance of a delicious meal for two francs fifty; and there are any number of jealously hidden places from which to choose. Let us go to Henriette’s, this tiny hole-in-the-wall, where one passes the fragrant-steaming kitchen on the way to the little room inside, and calls a greeting to the cook--an old friend--where he stands, lobster-pink and beaming, over his copper sauce-pans. Back under a patched and hoary skylight the tables are placed; and a family of mild-mannered mice clamber out over the glass to peer inquiringly at the gluttons below--who eat at one bite enough cheese to keep any decently delicate mouse for a week.

We order an omelette _aux champignons_, a Chateaubriand (corresponding to our tenderloin of steak) with pommes soufflés; as a separate vegetable, _petits pois à la Française_, and for dessert a heaping plate of wild strawberries to be eaten with one of these delectable brown pots of thick _crême d’Isigny_--aih! It makes one exquisitely languid only to think of it, all that luscious food! We lean back voluptuously in our stiff little chairs, and gaze about us while waiting for it.

At the half dozen tables round us are seated the modern prototypes of Rudolph and Mimi: mildly boisterous American youths from the Beaux Arts and Julien’s; careworn English spinsters with freckles and paint-smudged fingers; a Russian couple, with curious “shocked” hair and vivid, roving black eyes; a stray Frenchman or two, probably shop-keepers from the Boulevard, and a trio of models--red-lipped, torrid-eyed, sinuously round, in their sheath-fitting tailored skirts and cheap blouses. They are making a nonchalant meal off bread and cheese, and a bottle of _vin ordinaire_: evidently times are bad, or “_ce bon garçon_ Harry’s” remittance has not come.

Proof of other bad times is in the charming frieze painted, in commemoration of the Queen of Hearts, by two girl artists of a former day, who worked out their over-due bill to the house in this decorative fashion. For the poverty, at least, of the traditional Quarter survives; though smothered into side streets and obscure “passages” by the self-styled “Bohemians” of Boulevards Raspail and Montparnasse. And one notices that the habitués of Henriette’s and of all the humbler restaurants have their own napkin-rings which they take from the rack as they come in; does it not save them ten centimes, an entire penny, on the charge for _couvert_?

They have their own tobacco too, and roll their cigarettes with care not to spill a single leaf at the process; and you feel a heartless Dives to sit smoking your fragrant Egyptians after your luxurious meal and sipping golden Bénédictine at the considerable price of forty centimes (eight cents). Our more frugal neighbours, however, show no sign of envy, or indeed of interest of any sort; their careless indifference not only to us, but to their own meal and the desultory chatter of their comrades, speaks of long and familiar experience with both. Somehow they are depressing, these Rudolphs without their velveteens, these Mimis without their flowers and other romantic trappings of poverty; the hideous modern garments of the shabbily genteel only emphasize a sordid lack of petty cash.

I suggest that we run away from them, and hie us to the lilac-bushes and bewitching _bébés_ of the Jardin du Luxembourg; for in the realm of the great _artiste_ even the babies contribute to the scene, and in their fascinating short frocks, and wee rose-trimmed bonnets, are a gladsome troupe of Lilliputians with whom to while away one’s melancholy. But you may have an inhuman apathy towards babies, and prefer to taxi out to St. Germain for a view of the terrace, and a glimpse en route of sadly lovely Malmaison--the memory-haunted home of Josephine. Or you may suggest the races--though I hope you won’t, because in France the sport is secondary; and mannequins are a dull race. I had rather you chose an excursion up the Seine, on one of the fussy little river-boats; though of course at St. Cloud we should be sure to find a blaring street fair in possession of the forest, and at Meudon the same: the actors must bring their booths and flying pigs into the very domain of Dame Nature herself; being no respecters of congruity where passion for the theatric is concerned.

But we should have the cool vistas of the inner forest, and the stately satisfaction of historic stone stairs and mellow creamy-grey urns and statues through the trees; or we can go down the river instead to old Vincennes, and have a look at the grim prison-castle that has sheltered many a noble in disgrace. Which shall it be? To use Madame La France’s borrowed Spanish expression: I am “_tout à votre disposition_.”

III

AND ITS SEQUEL

Whichever it is, we must be back in time for tea at one of the fashionable “_fiv’ o’clocks_”; for, though many ladies who buy their clothes in Paris do not know it, looking at _grandes dames_ is vastly different from looking at mannequins or the demi-monde; and the French _grande dame_ is at her best at the tea hour. Someone has said, with truth, that the American woman is the best-dressed in the morning, the Englishwoman the best-dressed at night; but that the Parisienne triumphs over both in the gracious, clinging gown of afternoon.

Let us turn into this exclusive little establishment in the Place Vendôme, and from the vantage of a window-table in the mezzanine observe the lovely ladies as they enter. The first to come is in the simplest frock of leaf-green--the average American woman would declare it “positively _plain_”; there is not a sign of lace or hand embroidery about it, only at the open throat a soft fall of finest net, snowy as few American women would take pains to have it. And the lady’s hair is warm copper, and her hat a mere ingenious twist of leaf-green tulle; but a master hand has draped it and the simple frock of green; and the whole is a beautiful blend of line and colour, as unstudied as a bit of autumn woodland.

Here is a combination more striking. The lady just stepping from the pansy limousine has chosen yellow for her costume of shimmering crêpe; a rich dull ochre, with a hint of red in its flowing folds. At the neck and wrists are bits of fragile old embroidery, yellow too with age, and that melt into the flesh-tones of the wearer till they seem part of her living self; while at the slim waist-line is a narrow band of dusky rose--the kind of rose that looks faintly coated with silver--and daringly caught up high at the right side, a single mauve petunia. The hat of course is black--a mere nothing of a tiny toque, with one spray of filmy feather low against the lady’s blond hair.

“But she is not pretty at all,” you realize suddenly; “she’s really almost ugly, and yet--”

Exactly. A Frenchwoman can be as ugly as it pleases perverse Heaven to make her; there is always the “and yet” of her overwhelming charm. You may call it artificial if you like--the mere material allurements of stuffs and bits of thread; but to arrange those stuffs there must be a fine discrimination, to know how to use those bits of thread, a subtle science no other woman has--or ever quite acquires. Look about you in the tea-room--now fast filling with women of all ages and all tastes--what is it that forms their great general attraction? White hands, shown to perfection by a fall of delicate lace, or the gleam of a single big emerald or sapphire; hands moving daintily among fragile china, the sheen of silver, the transparency of glass. And above the hands, _vif_ faces, set in the soft coquetry of snowy ruches, graceful fichus, piquant Medici collars, but all open upon the alluring V of creamy throat.

What is it these women have? You can set down what they have on, but what is it you cannot set down, yet that you know they possess? It is the art of supreme femininity, carried out in the emphasis of every charm femininity has; by means of contrast, colour, above all by the subtlest means in everything: simplicity. And there is added to their conscious art a pervading delicate voluptuousness, that underlies the every expression of themselves as women; and that completes the havoc of the male they subjugate.

Look at him now. Do you know any man but an Englishman who _likes_ tea? Yet here they are, these absinthe-ridden Frenchmen drinking it with a fervour; but their eyes are not within their cups! For again the highly proper little dogs are present--“dogs for the afternoon,” of course; and the management has been thoughtful in providing discreet corners and deep window-seats, where a tête-a-tête may be enjoyed without too many interruptions on the part of the _chic_ waitress with a windward eye to tips.

Another precaution these abandoned couples take is a third person--usually a young girl--to be with them. Madame starts out with the young girl, by chance they meet Monsieur X at the five-o’clock, and have tea with him; of course he escorts the ladies home, and equally of course the young girl is “dropped” first. If between her house and that of Madame’s, the better part of an hour is employed in threading the tangled traffic of that time of evening, who can say a word except the chauffeur--who is given no reason to regret his long-suffering silence on such subjects. Thus during the hour after tea, the hour between six and seven, when kindly dusk lends her cloak to the game, husbands and wives play at their eternal trick of outwitting one another.

It may be a game that disgusts you, you may find it sordid, even repellent, to watch; but, among people with whom the marriage of convenience is universal (and in most respects turns out excellently well), what can you expect? A lover or a divorce, for both parties; and the French man and woman prefer to maintain the stability of house and name, and to wink at one another’s individual peccadilloes. They are generally very good friends, and devoted to their children; and never, never do they commit that crassness of the Anglo-Saxon, in bringing their amours within the home.

So let us watch the departing couples whirl away from the little tea-room, without too great severity; and ourselves wander out into the Place, and up the short, spectacular Rue de la Paix. This above all others is the hour to see it--when fashion throngs the narrow pavements, or bowls slowly past in open motor cars; and when the courts of the great dressmaker’s shops are filled with young blades, waiting for the mannequins to come down. One by one these marvellously slim, marvellously apparelled young persons appear; each choosing the most effective moment she can contrive for her particular entrance into the twilight of the street. A silken hum of skirts precedes her; the swains in the doorway eagerly look up--adjust their scarf-pins, give a jauntier tilt to their top-hats--and the apparition, sweetly smiling and emphatically perfumed, is among them.

There are murmured greetings, a suggestion from two of the bolder of the beaux, a gracious assent from the lady; and the three spin away in a taxi, to Armenonville or Château Madrid, for dinner. They have a very pleasant life, these mannequins; for lending the figure the _bon Dieu_ gave them--or that they painstakingly have acquired--they receive excellent salaries from the great _couturiers_. In consideration of which they appear at the establishment when they please, or not at all, when they have the caprice to stay away. If the figure is sufficiently remarkable, there is no limit to the whims they can enjoy--and be pardoned, even eagerly implored to return to their deserted posts. And then, as we see, after professional hours--what pleasaunce of opportunity! What boundless possibilities of _la vie chic_! Really, saith the ex-midinette complacently, it is good to have become a mannequin.

Some there are who at this excellent business-hour of evening, make a preoccupied exit; sweep past the disappointed gentlemen in waiting, and walk swiftly towards the maze and glitter of the Boulevard. The gentlemen shrug, comprehending. A _rendez-vous_. Out of idle curiosity, one of them may follow. “_Mais, ma chère!_” he murmurs reproachfully, at sight of the ill-restored antiquity the lady annexes at the corner.

She makes a deprecatory little face, over her shoulder, which says, “You ought to understand, one must be practical. But what about tomorrow night?” And a bit of paste-board flutters from her gold purse and at the feet of the reproachful gentleman; who smiles, picks it up, reads it, shrugs, and strolls back to his doorway, to find other extravagance for this evening.

What a Paris! you exclaim; is there anything in it besides the _rendez-vous_? Not at this hour. For mechanics and midinettes, bank-clerks and _vendeuses_, shop-keepers and ever-thrifty daughters of joy, pour into the boulevards in a human flood; and always, following Biblical example, they go two by two. In another hour they will be before their _croute-au-pot_, in one of these omnipresent cafés; for the present they anxiously wait on corners, or, with a relieved smile, link arms and move off at an absorbed, lingering gait down the boulevard.

Some halt, to sit down at the little tables on the side-walk, and drink an _apéritif_. Here too, the old dogs of commerce and industry get together over a _Pernod_ or a _Dubonnet_, and in groups of twos and threes heatedly thrash out the unheard-of fluctuations of the Bourse today. The _bon bourgeois_ meets his wife, and hears of the children’s cleverness, the servant’s perfidy, over a _sirop_; two anæmic young government clerks gulp Amer Picon, and violently contradict one another about the situation in Morocco; a well-known _danseuse_ sips vermouth with the long-haired youth who directs the orchestra at the Folies Bergères: it is as though, between six and seven, all Paris is strung along outside the cafés that link the boulevard into a chain of chairs and tables. And in the street, down the middle, motor-buses honk their horns, horse-buses crack their whips, cochers and chauffeurs shout anathema to one another and malediction on policemen and the human worm in general; while the traffic thickens and crawls slower with every minute, and a few helpless _gendarmes_ struggle in vain to preserve order.

Let us out of it all, and to dine. We can go to Château Madrid, and eat under the trees, and watch the gorgeous Parisiennes in the gallery as instinctively they group themselves to lend heightened effect to the _ensemble_; or we can go to Paillard’s and pay ten dollars apiece for the privilege of sitting against the wall and consuming such sauces as never were in Olympus or the earth beneath; or we can dine above the gardens of the _Ambassadeurs_, in the elegant little balcony that overhangs a miniature stage, and later look on at the _revue_. Or we can sail up the river in the balmy gloaming, and eat a _friture_ of smelts on the terrasse of the _Pêche Miraculeuse_--there are a score of places where we can find a delicious meal, and in each observe a different world; running from _do_ to _do_ in the scale of the race.