"These gentlemen are members. We know them well. Monsieur is doubtless altogether eligible, but our rules are our rules. We cannot accept cards of introduction, but if Monsieur will come here with sponsors who are members—"
Money would not buy the entrée. The directors of the Ostend Club take no chances. They leave that to the gamblers at the club tables.
With Ostend the season ends, and during the next week all of the expresses running to Paris are crowded with homing holiday folk. Dinard and the other Brittany resorts have been crowded as has Normandy, but Dinard is not so popular with the smart Parisienne as is Trouville, and money is not spent so lavishly in the Brittany resorts as in those of Normandy. Some Parisians of the fashionable set have wandered to Switzerland or to German or French spas. Others have spent the summer in quiet country houses and châteaux far from fashion's haunts; but from all quarters they flock to Paris when August is past, and Paris welcomes them with smiles. She has amused herself after a fashion, but the summer has been long and a trifle dull.
CHAPTER VIII
THE MERRY-GO-ROUND
The Parisienne adores Paris, but she is subject to acute attacks of that modern malady to which the leisure class is peculiarly susceptible, and which one of Madame's countrymen has aptly called the "nostalgie d'ailleurs"—homesickness for elsewhere.
Moved by that spirit of restlessness she forsakes Paris—in order that she may better love that city of her heart. She does not yearn for rest, but she wants change, and so she goes flitting here and there within easy reach of Paris—always within easy reach of Paris. Her fashion circuit is circumscribed by that national sentiment which makes the average Frenchman an unhappy and protesting alien anywhere outside of la belle France.
Madame goes to Monte Carlo; for the Côte d'Azur Rapid has made the Riviera resorts mere suburbs of Paris. She goes to Tangiers; for, after all, Tangiers is France, and in the French quarter of that picturesque place one finds a limited edition of Parisian society. But as for Cairo—no. The fashion show in Cairo, during the height of the season, is a great one, but it is furnished chiefly by English and Americans, and one finds few smart French folk in the throng. The Pyramids are too far from the Avenue des Acacias and the Rue de la Paix.