The Little Moment of Happiness

by Clarence Budington Kelland

So, after some difficulty, they persuaded the driver of a voiture to drive them up the Champs Élysées and the length of the Avenue du Bois de Boulogne to the gates of the park. There the cocher drew up to the curb inexorably and stopped without paying the least attention to the protests of the Americans.

“We must get down,” said Andree. “He cannot go inside.”

“But there are voitures inside—lots of them. Why can’t he go in?”

She shrugged her shoulders, but arose, and Madeleine followed her. They knew the way of the Paris coachmen—or it may have been a rule, or an agreement for the division of patronage. At any rate, they got down and paid the absurdly low fare. Then, walking two by two, they entered the famous park.

The walks near the entrance were crowded, but as they penetrated the city’s playground the congestion became less dense. But it did seem as if Madeleine were right, that all the world had come to the Bois that day. Every seat, and they were scattered about generously, was occupied. Back among the trees family parties had preempted shady glades and were spreading lunches. Buxom young women played battledore with poilus on permission, or engaged in what they seriously believed to be tennis with the most profound earnestness. This tennis delighted Bert, who insisted upon stopping to watch more than one game. The players had no nets—only rackets and a ball. With these they placed themselves sometimes as much as twenty feet apart and then lobbed the ball back and forth with such a seriousness and intensity that it seemed they were playing for life itself.... Children were everywhere, and stout old ladies who drowsed and lean old men who had taken off their coats and were tormented by insects.... Out on the pavements men and women and children rode furiously by on bicycles, all crouching apprehensively over their handlebars and pedaling for dear life.... Youths in French uniforms made vigorous and unashamed love to their sweethearts.... It was very hot.

A few minutes’ walk brought them to the lake, steaming with the heat of the day, its surface churned by the unskilled oars of pleasure-seekers. On the opposite shore was a dense crowd packed about a booth, awaiting their turns to go upon the water and suffer. Two or three huge bateaux capable of seating a score of people made little voyages up and down, each propelled by one sweating, coatless individual who pulled the enormous weight at such terrific speed that a circuit of the pond might have been made in an hour. The passengers sat packed together in blissful enjoyment.... Those who took rowboats seemed to have a positive genius for loading them in such a way as to make them unmanageable. In the middle was an elderly man, very stout, with two young girls. One girl rowed while her companions sat as far into the bow as possible, lifting the stern high in the air, and making any progress except a sort of whirligig motion impossible. There were collisions, shouts, laughter, screams—and an intolerable heat. But the crowd was happy as only a Parisian crowd can be happy. They had not the least fear of making themselves appear absurd; they went about their pleasure in a determined, do-or-die spirit, and everybody was so satisfied, so happy, so charming that Ken was delighted and tried to tell Andree how pleased he was by aid of French, English, and the dictionary, but only succeeding in bewildering the young lady utterly.... He had a suspicion that both Andree and Madeleine looked at those boats longingly, but with characteristic American terror of making himself look ridiculous he would not have gone upon that water if they had fallen on their knees to plead with him....

After a time they managed by bribery and cajolery to persuade a cocher to drive them about the park and an hour or two later got down near to a toy railroad with a tiny engine which pulled crowded trains along a child’s track. Bert, whose inhibitions were less pronounced than Ken’s, insisted upon riding. The girls boarded the train as a matter of course, with no trace of self-consciousness, but as they bowled along past crowds that waved and pointed and laughed, Ken felt like the father of all idiots.... Finally they arrived at the zoo, which Andree insisted upon inspecting.

The cages in the zoo which attracted the crowds contained dogs! Indeed, dogs were the backbone and almost the sum total of the animals to be seen. They were caged like bears and ran around and around behind their iron bars with the ceaseless gait of wolves. It rather revolted Kendall, especially to see a beautiful English setter in such an environment. There were setters, Danes, bulls, fox-terriers—and the crowds stood and stared and gasped and exclaimed as if they gazed at the behemoth of Holy Writ....

But it was all fascinating to Ken, all different and strange. Here was France again! He was seeing something foreign, not of the Middle West, and it was droll and incomprehensible to him. He did not speculate on what your Frenchman might have thought of a Sunday crowd at Coney Island or the Bronx Zoo or in Belle Isle Park in his own Detroit.... He reveled in it, drinking in eagerly the sensation that he was in another world peopled by incomprehensible beings who functioned in an incomprehensible manner.

Here at least was none of the depression and woe of war.... Had it not been for the presence of uniforms, one would have forgotten war. Ken wondered if these people had been able to forget it—and then reflected that some of these that he saw might be killed before another dawn by bombs dropped upon their sleeping homes from ruthless German aeroplanes.... All was lightness and joyousness now; in a few hours every individual here might be cowering in a cellar, damp with the sweat of fear of imminent slaughter....