“See Naples and die,” say the Italians. “See Paris and live,” say the
French. Old friends, who have been over and back, have been of late
telling me that Paris, having woefully suffered, is nowise the Paris it
was, and as the provisional offspring of four years of desolating war I
can well believe them. But a year or two of peace, and the city will
rise again, as after the Franco-Prussian War and the Commune, which
laid upon it a sufficiently blighting hand. In spite of fickle fortune
and its many ups and downs it is, and will ever remain, “Paris, the
Changeless.”
I never saw the town so much itself as just before the beginning of the
world war. I took my departure in the early summer of that fateful year
and left all things booming—not a sign or trace that there had ever
been aught but boundless happiness and prosperity. It is hard, the
saying has it, to keep a squirrel on the ground, and surely Paris is
the squirrel among cities. The season just ended had been, everybody
declared, uncommonly successful from the standpoints alike of the
hotels and cafés, the shop folk and their patrons, not to mention the
purely pleasure-seeking throng. People seemed loaded with money and
giddy to spend it.
The headwaiter at Voisin’s told me this: “Mr. Barnes, of New York,
ordered a dinner, carte blanche, for twelve.
“‘Now,’ says he, ‘garçon, have everything bang up, and here’s
seventy-five francs for a starter.’
“The dinner was bang up. Everybody hilarious. Mr. Barnes immensely
pleased. When he came to pay his bill, which was a corker, he made no
objection.
“‘Garçon,’ says he, ‘if I ask you a question will you tell me the
truth?’
“‘_Oui, monsieur; certainement._’
“Well, how much was the largest tip you ever received?”
“Seventy-five francs, monsieur.”
“‘Very well; here are 100 francs.’
“Then, after a pause for the waiter to digest his joy and express a
proper sense of gratitude and wonder, Mr. Barnes came to time with: ‘Do
you remember who was the idiot that paid you the seventy-five francs?’
“‘Oh, yes, monsieur. It was you.’”