Henri Bourdin, in intervals of waiting, used to make the time pass by acting all the most famous dramas of the modern French stage, and I vow that this single man used to give me the illusion of having seen the entire company of the Comédie Française, so vivid were his character studies and descriptions.
Abandoning the Sicilian to any opportunities of love he might find beyond the telephone receiver, Bourdin and I used to leave the office on the Boulevard des Capucines just as the light of dawn was creeping into the streets of Paris, when the chiffonniers picked at the rags in the dustbins, and pale ladies of the night passed like ghosts to their lodgings in mean streets.
We made our way sometimes to the markets—Les Halles—where the women of the Revolution used to gather with their knitting and their gossip of the latest heads to fall in the basket of the guillotine. Many of the houses round about belong to that period, and Bourdin and I used to take coffee in old eating and drinking houses like the “Chien qui Fume” (The Dog Who Smokes), which still have on their walls the iron brackets for the lanterns on which French aristocrats were hanged by infuriated mobs, in 1793.
They were still frequented by strange and sinister-looking characters. I remember one group, certainly as queer as any I have seen. Bourdin and I were seated at table when they came in excitedly—about thirty men and women, all laughing and jabbering. The men wore long hair, very wild and unkempt, with flowing black ties of “La Vallière” style. The women had short hair, cut with straight fringes. Presently another man appeared, astoundingly like Ary Scheffer’s study of Our Lord, with long pale hair, and straw-colored beard, and watery blue eyes. At his coming, the company became delirious with enthusiasm, while he went gravely round the circle and kissed each man and woman on the lips.
It was Bourdin who explained to me the mystery of these fantastic creatures. They belonged to the most advanced Anarchist society in Paris. The man who appeared last had just been acquitted by the French courts on a charge of kidnapping and locking up one of his fellow anarchists, who had betrayed the society to the police.
The only time in which I myself have been in the hands of the French police was in the early days of the war, while I was waiting in Paris for my papers as accredited war correspondent with the British Armies in the field. This unpleasant experience was due to my ceaseless curiosity in life and the rash acceptance of a casual invitation.
A friend of mine had become acquainted with two ladies who sang at “Olympia,” and I happened to be in a taxicab with him when they approached the door of his vehicle as we alighted.
It was eleven o’clock at night, and it was murmured by the two ladies that they were going to a “reception” at some apartment near the Étoile—a most aristocratic neighborhood. They would be delighted if we accompanied them. I was tired, and did not wish to go, but my friend Brown, always fresh at midnight, saw amusement ahead, and begged me to come.
“For an hour, then,” I said.
In the cab on the way to the Étoile, Brown sang mock Italian opera with one of the ladies, who had an excellent voice and a sense of humor. I exchanged a few remarks with the other lady, and was slightly disturbed by the somewhat German accent with which she spoke French.