IN WHICH A MODEST MAN MAUNDERS
"In my opinion," said I, "a man who comes to see Paris in three months is
a fool, and kin to that celebrated ass who circum-perambulated the globe
in eighty days. See all, see nothing. A man might camp a lifetime in the
Louvre and learn little about it before he left for Père Lachaise. Yet
here comes the United States in a gigantic "_mônome_" to see the city in
three weeks, when three years is too short a time in which to appreciate
the Carnavalet Museum alone! I'm going home."
"Oh, papa!" said Alida.
"Yes, I am," I snapped. "I'd rather be tried and convicted in Oyster Bay
on the charge of stealing my own pig than confess I had 'seen Paris' in
three months."
We had driven out to the Trocadero that day, and were now comfortably
seated in the tower of that somewhat shabby "palace," for the purpose of
obtaining a bird's eye view of the "Rive Droite" or right bank of the
Seine.
Elegant, modern, spotless, the Rive Droite spread out at our feet,
silver-gray squares of Renaissance architecture inlaid with the delicate
green of parks, circles, squares, and those endless double and quadruple
lines of trees which make Paris slums more attractive than Fifth Avenue.
Far as the eye could see stretched the exquisite monotony of the Rive
Droite, discreetly and artistically broken by domes and spires of
uncatalogued "monuments," in virgin territory, unknown and unsuspected
to those spiritual vandals whose hordes raged through the boulevards,
waving ten thousand blood-red Baedekers at the paralyzed Parisians.
"Well," said I, "now that we have 'seen' the Rive Droite, let's cast a
bird's-eye glance over Europe and Asia and go back to the hotel for
luncheon."
My sarcasm was lost on my daughters because they had moved out of
earshot. Alida was looking through a telescope held for her by a friend
of Captain de Barsac, an officer of artillery named Captain Vicômte
Torchon de Cluny. He was all over scarlet and black and gold; when he
walked his sabre made noises, and his ringing spurs reminded me of the
sound of sleigh-bells in Oyster Bay.
My daughter Dulcima was observing the fortress of Mont-Valerien through
a tiny pair of jewelled opera-glasses, held for her by Captain de
Barsac. It was astonishing to see how tirelessly De Barsac held those
opera-glasses, which must have weighed at least an ounce. But French
officers are inured to hardships and fatigue.
"Is _that_ a fortress?" asked Dulcima ironically. "I see nothing but
some low stone houses."
"Next to Gibraltar," said De Barsac, "it is the most powerful fortress
in the world, mademoiselle. It garrisons thousands of men; its stores
are enormous; it dominates not only Paris, but all France."
"But where are the cannon?" asked Dulcima.
"Ah--exactly--where? That is what other nations pay millions to find
out--and cannot. Will you take my word for it that there are one or two
cannon there--and permit me to avoid particulars?"
"You might tell me where just one little unimportant cannon is?" said my
daughter, with the naïve curiosity which amuses the opposite and still
more curious sex.
"And endanger France?" asked De Barsac, with owl-like solemnity.
"Thank you," pouted Dulcima, perfectly aware that he was laughing.
Their voices became low, and relapsed into that buzzing murmur which
always defeats its own ends by arousing parental vigilance.
"Let us visit the aquarium," said I in a distinct and disagreeable
voice. Doubtless the "voice from the wilderness" was gratuitously
unwelcome to Messieurs De Barsac and Torchon de Cluny, but they appeared
to welcome the idea with a conciliatory alacrity noticeable in young men
when intruded upon by the parent of pretty daughters. Dear me, how fond
they appeared to be of me; what delightful information they volunteered
concerning the Trocadero, the Alexander Bridge, the Champ de Mars.
* * * * *
The aquarium of the Trocadero is underground. To reach it you simply
walk down a hole in France and find yourself under the earth, listening
to the silvery prattle of a little brook which runs over its bed of
pebbles _above your head_, pouring down little waterfalls into endless
basins of glass which line the damp arcades as far as you can see. The
arcades themselves are dim, the tanks, set in the solid rock, are
illuminated from above by holes in the ground, through which pours the
yellow sunshine of France.
Looking upward through the glass faces of the tanks you can see the
surface of the water with bubbles afloat, you can see the waterfall
tumbling in; you can catch glimpses of green grass and bushes, and a bit
of blue sky.
Into the tanks fall insects from the world above, and the fish sail up
to the surface and lazily suck in the hapless fly or spider that tumbles
onto the surface of the water.
It is a fresh-water aquarium. All the fresh-water fish of France are
represented here by fine specimens--pike, barbels, tench, dace, perch,
gudgeons, sea-trout, salmon, brown-trout, and that lovely delicate
trout-like fish called _l'Ombre de Chevallier_. What it is I do not
know, but it resembles our beautiful American brook-trout in shape and
marking; and is probably a hybrid, cultivated by these clever French
specialists in fish-propagation.
Coming to a long crystal-clear tank, I touched the glass with my
finger-tip, and a slender, delicate fish, colored like mother-of-pearl,
slowly turned to stare at me.
"This," said I, "is that aristocrat of the waters called the 'Grayling.'
Notice its huge dorsal fin, its tender and diminutive mouth. It takes a
fly like a trout, but the angler who would bring it to net must work
gently and patiently, else the tender mouth tears and the fish is lost.
Is it not the most beautiful of all fishes?
"'Here and there a lusty trout;
Here and there a Grayling--'
"Ah, Tennyson knew. And that reminds me, Alida," I continued, preparing
to recount a personal adventure with a grayling in Austria--"that
reminds me----"
I turned around to find I had been addressing the empty and somewhat
humid atmosphere. My daughter Alida stood some distance away, gazing
absently at a tank full of small fry; and Captain Vicômte Torchon de
Cluny stood beside her, talking. Perhaps he was explaining the habits of
the fish in the tank.
My daughter Dulcima and Captain de Barsac I beheld far down the arcades,
strolling along without the faintest pretence of looking at anything but
each other.
"Very well," thought I to myself, "this aquarium is exactly the place I
expect to avoid in future--" And I cheerfully joined my daughters as
though they and their escorts had long missed me.
Now, of course, they all expressed an enthusiastic desire to visit
every tank and hear me explain the nature of their contents; but it was
too late.
"No," said I, "it is damp enough here to float all the fishes in the
Seine. And besides, as we are to 'see' the Rive Droite, we should
hasten, so that we may have at least half an hour to devote to the
remainder of France."
From the bowels of the earth we emerged into the sunshine, to partake of
an exceedingly modest luncheon in the Trocadero restaurant, under the
great waterfall.
Across the river a regiment of red-legged infantry marched, drums and
bugles sounding.
"All that territory over there," said De Barsac, "is given up to
barracks. It is an entire quarter of the city, occupied almost
exclusively by the military. There the streets run between miles of
monotonous barracks, through miles of arid parade grounds, where all day
long the _piou-pious_ drill in the dust; where the cavalry exercise;
where the field-artillery go clanking along the dreary streets toward
their own exercise ground beyond the Usine de Gaz. All day long that
quarter of the city echoes with drums beating and trumpets sounding, and
the trample of passing cavalry, and the clank and rattle of cannon.
Truly, in the midst of peace we prepare for--something else--we
French."
"It is strange," said I, "that you have time to be the greatest
sculptors, architects, and painters in the world."
"In France, monsieur, we never lack time. It is only in America that you
corner time and dispense it at a profit."
"Time," said I, "is at once our most valuable and valueless commodity.
Our millionaires seldom have sufficient time to avoid indigestion. Yet,
although time is apparently so precious, there are among us men who
spend it in reading the New York _Herald_ editorials. I myself am often
short of time, yet I take a Long Island newspaper and sometimes even
read it."
We had been walking through the gardens, while speaking, toward a large
crowd of people which had collected along the river. In the centre of
the crowd stood a taxicab, on the box of which danced the cabby,
gesticulating.
When we arrived at the scene of disturbance the first person I saw
distinctly was our acquaintance, the young man from East Boston,
hatless, dishevelled, all over dust, in the grasp of two agents de
police.
"He has been run over by a taxi," observed De Barsac. "They are going to
arrest him."
"Well, why don't they do it?" I said, indignantly, supposing that De
Barsac meant the chauffeur was to be arrested.
"They have done so."
"No, they haven't! They are holding the man who has been run over!"
"Exactly. He has been run over and they are arresting him."
"Who?" I demanded, bewildered.
"Why, the man who has been run over!"
"But why, in Heaven's name!"
"Why? Because he allowed himself to be run over!"
"What!" I cried. "They arrest the man who has been run over, and not the
man who ran over him?"
"It is the law," said De Barsac, coolly.
"Do you mean to tell me that the _runner_ is left free, while the
_runnee_ is arrested?" I asked in deadly calmness, reducing my question
to legal and laconic language impossible to misinterpret.
"Exactly. The person who permits a vehicle to run over him in defiance
of the French law, which says that nobody ought to let himself be run
over, is liable to arrest, imprisonment, and fine--unless, of course, so
badly injured that recovery is impossible."
Now at last I understood the Dreyfus Affaire. Now I began to comprehend
the laws of the Bandarlog. Now I could follow the subtle logic of the
philosophy embodied in "Alice in Wonderland" and "Through the
Looking-Glass!"
This was the country for me! Why, certainly; these people here could
understand a man who was guilty of stealing his own pig.
"I think I should like to live in Paris again," I said to my daughters;
then I approached the young man from East Boston and bade him cheer up.
He was not hurt; he was only rumpled and dusty and hopping mad.
"I shall pay their darned fine," he said. "Then I'm going to hire a cab
and drive it myself, and hunt up that cabman who ran over me, by Judas!"
* * * * *
That night I met Williams at the Café Jaune by previous and crafty
agreement; and it certainly was nice to be together after all these
years in the same old seats in the same café, and discuss the days that
we never could live again--and wouldn't want to if we could--alas!
The talk fell on Ellis and Jones, and immediately I perceived that
Williams had skillfully steered the conversation toward those two young
men--and I knew devilish well he had a story to tell me about them.
So I cut short his side-stepping and circling, and told him to be about
it as I wanted to devote one or two hours that night to a matter which I
had recently neglected--Sleep.
"That Jones," he said, "was a funny fellow. He and Ellis didn't meet
over here; Ellis was before his time. But they became excellent friends
under rather unusual circumstances.
"Ellis, you know, was always getting some trout fishing when he was over
here. He was a good deal of a general sportsman. As for Jones--well, you
remember that he had no use for anything more strenuous than a motor
tour."
"I remember," I said.
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