第62章

THE INNOCENCE OF PARIS

This meeting with William and Dora was fortunate from the point of view of my studies; for that very night, as I dined with them en pension, I found that providence, with his usual foresight, had placed me next to a very charming American girl of the type that I was particularly wishful to study.She seemed equally wishful to be studied, and we got on amazingly from the first moment of our acquaintance.By the middle of dinner we were pressing each other's feet under the table, and when coffee and cigarettes had come, we were affianced lovers."Why should Iblush to own I love?" was evidently my quaint little companion's motto; and indeed she didn't blush to own it to the whole table, and publicly to announce that I was the dearest boy, and absolutely the most lovable man she had met.There was nothing she wouldn't do for me.Would she brave the terrors of the Latin Quarter with me, I asked, and introduce me to the terrible Cafe d'Harcourt, about which William and Dora had suffered such searchings of heart? "Why, certainly; there was nothing in that," she said.So we went.

Nothing is more absurd and unjust than those crude labels of national character which label one country virtuous and another vicious, one musical and another literary.Thus France has an unjust reputation for vice, and England an equally unjust reputation for virtue.

I had always, I confess, been brought up to think of Paris as a sort of Sodom and Gomorrah in one.Good Americans might go to Paris, according to the American theory of a future state; but, certainly I had thought, no good Englishman ever went there--except, maybe, on behalf of the Vigilance Society.Well, it may sound an odd thing to say, but what impressed me most of all was the absolute innocence of the place.

I mean this quite seriously.For surely one important condition of innocence is unconsciousness of doing wrong.The poor despised Parisian may be a very wicked and depraved person, but certainly he goes about with an absolute unconsciousness of it upon his gay and kindly countenance.

"Seeing the world" usually means seeing everything in it that most decent people won't look at; but when you come to look at these terrible things and places, what do you find? Why, absolute disappointment!

Have you ever read that most amusing book, "Baedeker on Paris"?

I know nothing more delightful than the notes to the Montmartre and Latin Quarters.The places to which you, as a smug Briton, may or may not take a lady! The scale of wickedness allowed to the waxwork British lady is most charmingly graduated.I had read that the cafe where we were sitting was one of the most terrible places in Paris,--the Cafe d'Harcourt, where the students of the Latin Quarter take their nice little domestic mistresses to supper.But Baedeker was dreadfully Pecksniffian about these poor innocent etudiantes, many of whom love their lovers much more truly than many a British wife loves her husband, and are much better loved in return.If you doubt it, dare to pay attention to one of these young ladies, and you will probably have to fight a duel for it.In fact, these romantic relations are much more careful of honour than conventional ones;for love, and not merely law, keeps guard.

I looked around me.Where were those terrible things I had read of? Where was this hell which I had reasonably expected would gape leagues of sulphur and blue flame beneath the little marble table? I mentally resolved to bring an action against Baedeker for false information.For what did I see? Simply pairs and groups of young men and women chattering amiably in front of their "bocks" or their "Americains." Here and there a student would have his arm round a waist every one else envied him.One student was prettily trying a pair of new gloves upon his little woman's hand.Here and there blithe songs would spring up, from sheer gladness of heart; and never was such a buzz of happy young people, not even at a Sunday-school treat.

To me it seemed absolutely Arcadian, and I thought of Daphnis and Chloe and the early world.Nothing indecorous or gross; all perfectly pretty and seemly.

On our way home Semiramis was so sweet to me, in her innocent, artless frankness, that I went to bed with an intoxicating feeling that I must be irresistible indeed, to have so completely conquered so true a heart in so few hours.I was the more flattered because I am not a vain man, and am not, like some, accustomed to take hearts as the Israelites took Jericho with the blast of one's own trumpet.

But, alas! my dream of universal irresistibility was but short-lived, for next afternoon, as William and I sat out at some cafe together, I found myself the object of chaff.

"Well," said William, "how goes the love-affair?"I flushed somewhat indignantly at his manner with sanctities.

"I see!" he said, "I see! You are already corded and labelled, and will be shipped over by the next mail,--`To Miss Semiramis Wilcox, 1001 99th St., Philadelphia, U.S.A.Man with care.' Well, I did think you'd got an eye in your head.