He had selected The Hague as a safe middle ground, after consulting the map of Europe in his guidebook.
“That will draw their fire,” he thought complacently. “We shall see on which side of the game they are!”
Having mailed the letter, he strolled out to the boulevards to enjoy his first whiff of Paris. This was the city that he had walked in his dreams! He had never hoped to see it; but now he was strolling along the Boulevard des Italiens, and there before his eyes lay the great Place de l’Opéra, with its maze of automobiles, ’buses, and pedestrians. And there—Brainard stopped in the middle of the crowded place, wrapped in wonder, staring at the gilded figures on the façade of the Opéra, until an excitable official with a white baton poured a stream of voluble expostulation into his ear, and he dodged from under an omnibus just in time to fall into the path of a motor, causing general execration.
The official with the white stick finally landed him on the curb before he became an obstruction to traffic. He sank into an inviting iron chair and ordered a drink, as he saw that that was what the Parisians used their sidewalks for. In answer to his labored French, there came back in the purest Irish:
“Whisky, sor? Black and White, sor? Very good, sor!”
“Well, I never!” he murmured, radiant with happiness.
When the waiter reappeared with the drink, he was gazing down the broad avenue, entranced.
“Where does that go?” he whispered to the waiter, thrusting a bill into the curving palm and pointing vaguely before him.
“The Luver, sure, sor. You’ll be wanting a nurse before the day is done!” the Irishman muttered.
And indeed the self-contained young American began to act like a lunatic let loose. Gulping down his whisky, he set off at random, plunging again into the sea of traffic, finally escaping to the shelter of a cab. The driver, after vain attempts to extract an intelligible order from his fare, just drove on and on through the boulevards, across great squares, up the noble avenue to the lofty arch, and then came back to the center of the city and stopped suggestively before a restaurant.