It was the thought of being in the heart of things, right at the Place de l'Opéra, that prompted us to choose the Grand Hotel. The price of rooms was preposterous. We took the cheapest they had on the top floor. The economical choice is sometimes the lucky one. Next time you are in the Place de l'Opéra, look up to the attic of the Grand Hotel, and you will see little balconies between the windows. Each window represents a room. So does each balcony. We drew a balcony. It was just wide enough for two honeymoon chairs; and it was summer time.
When I was waiting in the vestibule of a New York church for the first strains of the wedding march, my brother pressed a five-dollar gold piece inside my white glove. "For a bang-up dinner when you get to London," he whispered. In London we had been entertained by friends. This was the time to spend it. The initiated would open his eyes wide at the thought of the "bang-up" dinner for two for twenty-five francs in Paris today—or anywhere else in the world. But remember I am writing about nineteen hundred and eight. Six years before the war, twenty-five francs would do the trick, and do it well, on the Grands Boulevards. We had fried chicken with peas, salad and fruits rafraîchis at Pousset's, and there was some change after a liberal (ante-bellum!) tip.
After dinner we strolled along the Boulevards des Italiens. We came to a big white place, with a wealth of electric lamps, that spelled PATHE—PALACE. A barker walked up and down in front, wearing a gold-braided cap and a green redingote. We paused as at the circus. It was a cinema. Herbert wanted to go in, but I wasn't sure. I had never seen moving pictures and had heard that they hurt one's eyes. To be a good sport I yielded. It was a revelation to me, and I felt as I did a year or two later when I first saw an aeroplane. My censor and literary critic, who has not the imagination of an Irishman, wants to eliminate this paragraph. But I have refused. It is true that I had never been to the cinema before I married him, and I am not sure that it was not his first time, too. The wonders of one decade are the commonplace of the next, and in retrospect we should not forget this. "Nineteen-eight" was to be the wonder year. Is there not an old Princeton song, still in the book, which was sung with expectation by our fathers? It went something like this:
I'll sing of the days that will come,
Of the changes that many won't see,
Of the times years and years hence.
I can tell you where some of you'll be:
If you don't know I'll give you the tip.
So catch on and don't be too late:
If you do, you'll get left and you'll all lose your grip
In the year nineteen hundred and eight.
And then the chorus, as they used to sing it—that older generation—on the steps of Nassau Hall:
In nineteen hundred and eight, in nineteen hundred and eight
You can go to the moon in a two day balloon;
In nineteen hundred and eight, in nineteen hundred and eight
To the north pole you can skate,
And you'll find Annie Laurie cutting grass on the Bowery,
In nineteen hundred and eight.
After the movies we went back to the Hotel, and sat out on our balcony with the brilliant vistas of the Avenue de l'Opéra and the Boulevard des Italiens before us. We could hear the music of the opera orchestra, faintly to be sure, but it was there. The spell of six and sixteen came back. Nearly another decade had passed, but Paris was home to me, and I had a twinge of regret that we were going farther afield. Had it not been for the news of Niazi Bey and Enver taking to the mountains in a revolt against the Sultan, I might have suggested giving up Turkey.
I was glad that we would have to stay long enough to get our passports. The passport, now the indispensable vade mecum of travelers everywhere, was needed only for Rumania and Turkey and Russia ten years ago. To make up for the extravagance of the Grand Hotel we found our way to the American Embassy and the Turkish Embassy afoot. Every corner of the Champs-Elysées had brought back memories to me and I was able to point out to Herbert the guignol to which Marie had often taken my little sister and me nearly twenty years before. We stopped to listen. Some of the jokes were just the same. Judy had lost the stove-lid, and Punch told her to sit on the hole herself. And a useful and indispensable nursery household article (whose name I shall not mention) was suddenly clapped by Punch over the policeman's head in the same old way. The children laughed and clapped their hands in glee. Herbert, on his side, showed me the walk he used to take every morning from his room on the Rue d'Amsterdam by the Rue de la Boëtie and the Avenue d'Antin[A] to the Exposition of 1900, when he was writing feature stories for the Sunday edition of the New York World.
[A] The Avenue d'Antin has become since the victory in the recent war Avenue Victor Emmanuel III., in honor of Italy's intervention.