Mais vous n'avez pas diné!
The man turned and shot his reply over his shoulder, Nous rentrons!
The crowd on the terrasse shrieked with delight. They applauded. Some even tossed flowers from the tables after the happy couple and we ... we sat down in the chairs they had relinquished. I am not certain that we did not eat the dinner they had ordered. At any rate we began with the cucumbers and radishes and écrevisses and a bottle of Graves Supérior.
That night in Paris I saw no Americans, at least no one seemed to be an American, and I heard no English spoken. How this came about I have no idea because it never occurred again. In fact, one meets more Americans in Paris than one does in New York and most of the French that I manage to speak I have picked up on the Island of Manhattan. During dinner I began to suspect a man without a beard, in a far corner, but Albert reassured me.
He is surely French, he said, because he is buttering his radishes.
It would be difficult to exaggerate my emotion: the white wine, the bearded French students, the exquisite women, all young and smiling and gay, all organdie and lace and sweet-peas, went to my head. I have spent many happy evenings in the Café d'Harcourt since that night. I have been there with Olive Fremstad, when she told me how, dressed as a serpent in bespangled Nile green, she had sung the finale of Salome to Edward VII in London, and one memorable Mardi-Gras night with Jane Noria, when, in a long raincoat which covered me from head to foot, standing on our table from time to time, I shouted, C'est l'heure fatale! and made as if to throw the raincoat aside but Noria, as if dreading the exposure, always dragged me down from the table, crying, No! No! until the carnival crowd, consumed with curiosity, pulled me into a corner, tore the raincoat away, and everything else too! There was another night, before the Bal des Quat'z Arts, when the café was filled with students and models in costume, and costume for the Quat'z Arts in those days, whatever it may be now, did not require the cutting out of many handkerchiefs. But the first night was the best and every other night a more or less pale reflection of that, always, indeed, coloured a little by the memory of it. So that today, when sometimes I am asked what café I prefer in Paris and I reply, the d'Harcourt, there are those who look at me a little pityingly and some even go so far as to ejaculate, O! that! but I know why it is my favourite.
Even a leisurely dinner ends at last, and I knew, as we sipped our coffee and green chartreuse and smoked our cigarettes, that this one must be over. After paying our very moderate addition, we strolled slowly away, to hop into an empty fiacre which stood on the corner a block down the boulevard. I lay back against the seat and gazed at the stars for a moment as the drive began through the warm, fragrant Paris air, the drive back to the right bank, this time across the Pont Neuf, down the Rue de Rivoli, through the Place de la Concorde, where the fountains were playing, and up the Champs-Elysées. The aroma of the chestnuts, the melting grey of the buildings, the legions of carriages and buses, filled with happy, chattering people, the glitter of electricity, all the mystic wonder of this enchanting night will always stay with me.
We drove to the Théâtre Marigny where we saw a revue; at least we were present at a revue; I do not remember to have seen or heard anything on the stage. Between the acts, we walked in the open foyer, at this theatre a sort of garden, and admired the cocottes, great ladies of some distant epoch, they seemed to me, in their toilets from Redfern and Doucet and Chéruit and Callot Sœurs, their hats from the Rue de la Paix and the Place Vendôme, their exceedingly elaborate and decoratively artificial complexions. Later, we sipped cassis on the balcony. It was Spring in Paris and I was young! The chestnut trees were heavy with white blossoms and the air was laden with their perfume. I gazed down the Champs-Elysées, surely the true Elysian Fields, a myriad of lights shining through the dark green, the black, leaved branches. I do not think I spoke many words and I know that Albert did not. He may have been bored, but I think he derived some slight pleasure from my juvenile enthusiasm for, although Paris was old hat to him, he loved this particular old hat.
We must have stopped somewhere for more drinks on the way home, perhaps at Weber's in the Rue Royale, where there was a gipsy band. I do not remember, but I am sure that it was nearly four in the morning when we drove up before the little hotel in the Place de l'Odéon and when, after we had paid the driver and dismissed him, I discovered to my astonishment that the door was locked. Albert assured me that this was the custom and that I must ring for the concierge. So I pulled the knob, and even outside we could hear the distant reverberations of the bell, but no reply came, and the door remained closed. It was Joseph's job to open the door and Joseph was asleep and refused to awaken. Again and again we pulled the cord, the bell tinkling in the vast silence, for the street was utterly deserted, but still no one came. At last we desisted, Albert suggesting that I go home with him. We walked a few paces until we came to the iron fence surrounding the Luxembourg Gardens and there, lying beside it, I espied a ladder, left by some negligent workman.
But my room is on the first floor. The window is open; it looks over the Place. I can enter with the ladder, I cried.