Elsewhere
In These Parks The Not-So-Well-To-Do Gather In Great Numbers; Some
Drinking Harmless Sirupy Drinks At
The gay little refreshment
kiosks; some packing themselves about the man who has tamed the
tree sparrows until they come
At his call and hive in chattering,
fluttering swarms on his head and his arms and shoulders; some
applauding a favorite game of the middle classes that is being
played in every wide and open space. I do not know its name
- could not find anybody who seemed to know its name - but this
game is a kind of glorified battledore and shuttlecock played with
a small, hard ball capable of being driven high and far by smartly
administered strokes of a hide-headed, rimmed device shaped like
a tambourine. It would seem also to be requisite to its proper
playing that each player shall have a red coat and a full spade
beard, and a tremendous amount of speed and skill. If the ball
gets lost in anybody's whiskers I think it counts ten for the
opposing side; but I do not know the other rules.
A certain indefinable, unmistakably Gallic flavor or piquancy
savors the life of the people; it disappears only when they cease
to be their own natural selves. A woman novelist, American by
birth, but a resident of several years in Paris, told me a story
illustrative of this. The incident she narrated was so typical
that it could never have happened except in Paris, I thought. She
said she was one of a party who went one night to dine at a little
cafe much frequented by artists and art students. The host was
himself an artist of reputation. As they dined there entered a
tall, gloomy figure of a man with a long, ugly face full of flexible
wrinkles; such a figure and such a face as instantly commanded
their attention. This man slid into a seat at a table near their
table and had a frugal meal. He had reached the stage of demitasse
and cigarette when he laid down cup and cigarette and, fetching a
bit of cardboard and a crayon out of his pocket, began putting
down lines and shadings; between strokes he covertly studied the
profile of the man who was giving the dinner party. Not to be
outdone the artist hauled out his drawing pad and pencil and made
a quick sketch of the long-faced man. Both finished their jobs
practically at the same moment; and, rising together with low bows,
they exchanged pictures - each had done a rattling good caricature
of the other - and then, without a word having been spoken or a
move made toward striking up an acquaintance, each man sat him
down again and finished his dinner.
The lone diner departed first. When the party at the other table
had had their coffee they went round the corner to a little circus
- one of the common type of French circuses, which are housed in
permanent wooden buildings instead of under tents. Just as they
entered, the premier clown, in spangles and peak cap, bounded into
the ring. Through the coating of powder on it they recognized his
wrinkly, mobile face: it was the sketch-making stranger whose
handiwork they had admired not half an hour before.
Hearing the tale we went to the same circus and saw the same clown.
His ears were painted bright red - the red ear is the inevitable
badge of the French clown - and he had as a foil for his funning a
comic countryman known on the program as Auguste, which is the
customary name of all comic countrymen in France; and, though I
knew only at second hand of his sketch-making abilities, I am
willing to concede that he was the drollest master of pantomime
I ever saw. On leaving the circus, very naturally we went to the
cafe - where the first part of the little dinner comedy had been
enacted. We encountered both artists, professional or amateur, of
blacklead and bristol board, but we met a waiter there who was
an artist - in his line. I ordered a cigar of him, specifying
that the cigar should be of a brand made in Havana and popular in
the States. He brought one cigar on a tray. In size and shape
and general aspect it seemed to answer the required specifications.
The little belly band about its dark-brown abdomen was certainly
orthodox and regular; but no sooner had I lit it and taken a couple
of puffs than I was seized with the conviction that something had
crawled up that cigar and died. So I examined it more closely and
I saw then that it was a bad French cigar, artfully adorned about
its middle with a second-hand band, which the waiter had picked
up after somebody else had plucked it off one of the genuine
articles and had treasured it, no doubt, against the coming of
some unsophisticated patron such as I. And I doubt whether that
could have happened anywhere except in Paris either. That is just
it, you see. Try as hard as you please to see the real Paris,
the Paris of petty larceny and small, mean graft intrudes on you
and takes a peck at your purse.
Go where you will, you cannot escape it. You journey, let us
assume, to the Tomb of Napoleon, under the great dome that rises
behind the wide-armed Hotel des Invalides. From a splendid rotunda
you look down to where, craftily touched by the softened lights
streaming in from high above, that great sarcophagus stands housing
the bones of Bonaparte; and above the entrance to the crypt you
read the words from the last will and testament of him who sleeps
here: "I desire that my ashes may repose on the banks of the Seine,
among the French people I have so well loved." And you reflect
that he so well loved them that, to glut his lusting after power
and yet more power, he led sundry hundreds of thousands of them
to massacre and mutilation and starvation; but that is the way of
world - conquerors the world over - and has absolutely nothing to do
with this tale.
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