The Adventures of a Modest Man. Robert W. Chambers
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to know how soon we were going to the dressmakers.
Now at last we were rolling up the Champs Elysées, with the Arc de Triomphe, a bridge of pearl at the end of the finest vista in the world. Past us galloped gay cavalry officers, out for a morning canter in the Bois de Boulogne; past us whizzed automobiles of every hue, shape and species.
Past us, too, trotted shoals of people well diluted by our fellow countrymen, yet a truly Parisian crowd for all that. Hundreds of uniforms dotted the throngs; cuirassiers in short blue stable jackets, sabres hooked under their left elbows, little piou-piou lads, in baggy red trousers and shakos bound with yellow; hussars jingling along, wearing jackets of robin's-egg blue faced with white; chasseurs à Cheval, wearing turquoise blue braided with black; then came the priests in black, well groomed as jackdaws in April; policemen in sombre uniforms, wearing sword bayonets; gendarmes off duty—for the Republican Guard takes the place of the Gendarmerie within the walls of Paris; smart officers from the Fontainebleau artillery school, in cherry-red and black; Saint-Cyr soldiers in crude blues and reds, with the blue shako smothered under plumes; then Sisters, in their dark habits and white coifs, with sweet, serene faces looking out on the sinful world they spend their lives in praying for.
"Dulcima," I said, "what particular characteristic strikes you when you watch these passing throngs of women?"
"Their necks; every Parisienne is a beauty from behind—such exquisite necks and hair."
"Their ankles," added Alida innocently; "they are the best-shod women in the world!"
I had noticed something of the sort; in fact, there is no escape for a man's eyes in Paris. Look where he will, he is bound to bring up against two neat little shoes trotting along demurely about their own frivolous business. One cannot help wondering what that business may be or where those little polished shoes are going so lightly, tap! tap! across the polished asphalt. And there are thousands on thousands of such shoes, passing, repassing, twinkling everywhere, exquisite, shapely, gay little shoes of Paris, pattering through boulevard and avenue, square, and street until the whole city takes the cadence, keeping time, day and night, to the little tripping feet of the Parisienne—bless her, heart and sole!
"Of what are you thinking, papa?" asked Alida.
"Nothing, child, nothing," I muttered.
We left our taxi and mounted to the top of the Arc de Triomphe. The world around us was bathed in a delicate haze; silver-gray and emerald the view stretched on every side from the great Basilica on Montmârtre to the silent Fortress of Mont-Valerien; from the vast dome of the Pantheon, springing up like a silver bubble in the sky, to the dull golden dome of the Invalides, and the dome of the Val-de-Grâce.
Spite of the Sainte Chapel, with its gilded lace-work, spite of the bizarre Tour Saint-Jacques, spite of the lean monster raised by Monsieur Eiffel, straddling the vase Esplanade in the west, the solid twin towers of Nôtre-Dame dominated the spreading city by their sheer majesty—dominated Saint-Sulpice, dominated the Trocadero, dominated even the Pantheon.
"From those towers," said I, "Quasimodo looked down and saw the slim body of Esmeralda hanging on the gibbet."
"What became of her goat?" asked Alida, who was fond of pets.
"That reminds me," began Dulcima, "that now we are safely in Paris we might be allowed to ask papa about that——"
"There is a steamer which sails for New York to-morrow," I said calmly. "Any mention of that pig will ensure us staterooms in half an hour."
Considerably subdued, the girls meekly opened their Baedekers and patronized the view, while I lighted a cigar and mused.
It was my second cigar that morning. Certainly I was a changed man—but was it a change for the better? Within me I felt something stirring—I knew not what.
It was that long-buried germ of gayety, that latent uncultivated and embryotic germ which lies dormant in all Anglo-Saxons; and usually dies dormant or is drowned in solitary cocktails at a solemn club.
Certainly I was changing. Van Dieman was right. Doubtless any change could not be the worse for a man who has not sufficient intelligence to take care of his own pig.
"There is," said Dulcima, referring to her guidebook, "a café near here in the Bois de Boulogne, called the Café des Fleurs de Chine. I should so love to breakfast at a Chinese café."
"With chopsticks!" added Alida, soulfully clasping her gloved hands.
"Your Café Chinois is doubtless a rendezvous for Apaches," I said, "but we'll try it if you wish."
I am wondering, now, just what sort of a place that café is, set like a jewel among the green trees of the Bois. I know it is expensive, but not very expensive; I know, also, that the dainty young persons who sipped mint on the terrace appeared to disregard certain conventionalities which I had been led to believe were never disregarded in France.
The safest way was to pretend a grave abstraction when their bright eyes wandered toward one; and I did this, without exactly knowing why I did.
"I wish," said I to Dulcima, "that Van Dieman were here. He understands all this surface life one sees in the parks and streets."
"Do you really wish that Mr. Van Dieman were here?" asked Alida, softly coloring.
I looked at her gravely.
"Because," she said, "I believe he is coming about the middle of May."
"Oh, he is, is he?" I said, without enthusiasm. "Well, we shall doubtless be in the Rhine by the middle of May."
"My gowns couldn't be finished until June any way," said Dulcima, laying her gloved fingers on Alida's chair.
So they were allies, then.
"I didn't know you had ordered any gowns," I said superciliously.
"I haven't—yet," she said coolly.
"Neither have I," began Alida; but I refused to hear any more.
"When you are at your modistes you may talk gowns until you faint away," said I; "but now let us try to take an intelligent interest in this famous and ancient capital of European civilization and liberty——"
"Did you notice that girl's gown?" motioned Alida to Dulcima.
I also looked. But it was not the beauty of the gown that I found so remarkable.
"I wonder," thought I—"but no matter. I wish that idiot Van Dieman were here."
That evening, after my daughters had retired, I determined to sit up later than I ought to. The reckless ideas which Paris inspired in me, alarmed me now and then. But I was game.
So I seated myself in the moonlit court of the hotel and lighted an unwise cigar and ordered what concerns nobody except the man who swallowed it, and, crossing my legs, looked amiably around.
Williams sat at the next table.
"Hello, old sport," he said affably.
"Williams," I said, "guess who I was thinking about a moment ago."
"A girl?"
"No, of course not. I was thinking of Jim Landon. What ever became of him?"
"Jim? Oh, he's all right."
"Successful?"
"Very. You ought to have heard of him over there; but I suppose you don't keep up with art news."
"No," I admitted, ashamed—"it's rather difficult to keep up with anything on Long Island. Does Jim Landon live here?"
"In Normandy, with his wife."
"Oh, he got married. Was it that wealthy St. Louis girl who——"
"No; she married into the British Peerage. No, Landon didn't do anything of that sort. Quite the contrary."
"He—he didn't marry his model,