Writing of that last Sunday in the Bois de Boulogne, I find by
recurring to the record that I said: “There is a deal more of good than
bad in every Nation. I take off my hat to the French. But, I have had
my fling and I am quite ready to go home. Even amid the gayety and the
glare, the splendor of color and light, the Hungarian band wafting to
the greenery and the stars the strains of the delicious waltz, La Veuve
Joyeuse her very self—yea, many of her—tapping the time at many
adjacent tables, the song that fills my heart is ‘Hame, Hame,
Hame!—Hame to my ain countree.’ Yet, to come again, d’ye mind? I should
be loath to say good-by forever to the Bois de Boulogne. I want to come
back to Paris. I always want to come back to Paris. One needs not to
make an apology or give a reason.
“We turn rather sadly away from Pré Catalan and the Café Cascade. We
glide adown the flower-bordered path and out from the clusters of
Chinese lanterns, and leave the twinkling groves to their music and
merry-making. Yonder behind us, like a sentinel, rises Mont Valerien.
Before us glimmer the lamps of uncountable coaches, as our own, veering
toward the city, the moon just topping the tower of St. Jacques de la
Boucherie and silver-plating the bronze figures upon the Arch of Stars.
“We enter the Port Maillot. We turn into the Avenue du Bois. Presently
we shall sweep with the rest through the Champs Èlysées and on to the
ocean of the infinite, the heart of the mystery we call Life, nowhere
so condensed, so palpable, so appealing. Roll the screen away! The
shades of Clovis and Genevieve may be seen hand-in-hand with the shades
of Martel and Pepin, taking the round of the ghost-walk between St.
Denis and St. Germain, now le Balafré and again Navarre, now the
assassins of the Ligue and now the assassins of the Terror, to keep
them company. Nor yet quite all on murder bent, some on pleasure; the
Knights and Ladies of the Cloth of Gold and the hosts of the
Renaissance: Cyrano de Bergerac and François Villon leading the
ragamuffin procession; the jades of the Fronde, Longueville, Chevreuse
and fair-haired Anne of Austria; and Ninon, too, and Manon; and the
never-to-be-forgotten Four, ‘one for all and all for one;’ Cagliostro
and Monte Cristo; on the side, Rabelais taking notes and laughing under
his cowl. Catherine de Medici and Robespierre slinking away, poor,
guilty things, into the pale twilight of the Dawn!
“Names! Names! Only names? I am not just so sure about that. In any
event, what a roll call! We are such stuff as dreams are made of, and
our little life is rounded by a sleep; the selfsame sleep which these,
our living dead men and women in steel armor and gauzy muslins, in
silken hose and sock and buskin, epaulettes and top boots, brocades and
buff facings, have endured so long and know so well!
“If I should die in Paris I should expect them—or some of them—to meet
me at the barriers and to say, ‘Behold, the wickedness that was done in
the world, the cruelty and the wrong, dwelt in the body, not in the
soul of man, which freed from its foul incasement, purified and made
eternal by the hand of death, shall see both the glory and the hand of
God!’”
It was not to be. I shall not die in Paris. I shall never come again.
Neither shall I make apology for this long quotation by myself from
myself, for am I not inditing an autobiography, so called?