"May the Lord deliver us from a Germanized Paris!" Kendricks prayed. "They may have the Ritz, if they will, and the Elysées Palace. They may have all the halls of fashion and gilt and wealth. They may swamp the Pré Catelan and the Armenonville, so long as they leave us the real Paris. Come, we take our coffee here. This is a German café, if you like. Never mind, let us see if by chance any French people have wandered in."
They drank coffee at a little table in a huge building, hung with tobacco smoke, with the inevitable band at one end, and crowded with people. Kendricks smiled as the waiter brought them sugared cakes with their coffee.
"It is Germany," he declared. "Look! An odd Frenchman or two, perhaps; no French women. Look at the hats, the women's faces. The hats looked well enough in the shop-windows here. What an ignoble end for them! From an aesthetic point of view, Julien, nothing is more terrible than the domesticity of the German. If only he could be persuaded to leave his wife at home! Think how much more attractive it would make these places. He would have more money to spend upon himself, upon his own beer and his own pretzels, and in time, no doubt, a lonely feeling, a feeling of sentiment, would overpower him, and the vacant chair would be filled by one of these vivacious little women who might teach him in time that blood was meant to flow, not to ooze like mud."
"I shall begin to think," Julien remarked, "that you don't like
Germans."
"There you are wrong," Kendricks replied. "In their own country I like them. They have all the good qualities. Germany for the Germans, I should say always, and me for any other country. We have drunk our coffee. Let us go."
They passed on to a music-hall, where they listened to a mixed performance and drank beer out of long glasses, served to them by a distinctly Teutonic waiter. Greatly to Kendricks' annoyance, however, they were surrounded by English and Americans, and were too tightly packed in to change their seats. On the way out, however, he suddenly beamed.
"Behold!" he exclaimed.
He swept his hat from his head. It was their companions at the dinner table. Madame was pleased to remember him, also mademoiselle.
"I shall invite them to supper," Kendricks declared.
"If you do," Julien retorted, "I shall go home."