It is in a crooked little street which runs breathlessly for a block between Notre-Dame-des-Champs and the Boulevard Montparnasse—and there stops; leaving you with the insinuation that it has done its best to squeeze in on this frazzled boundary of the old Quarter, and that more cannot be expected of it. On one side of the abrupt block, rambles the one-time hôtel of the Duchesse de Chevreuse; intrigante, cosmopolitan, irresponsible lover of adventure, who kept Louis XIII’s court in a hubbub with her pranks and her inordinate influence over Queen Anne.
The grey court that has seen the trysts of Chalais, Louvigni, even of the great Richelieu himself, rests still intact; and they say the traditional secret passage also—leading from a hidden recess in the garden to the grands palais. But that is only legend (which, by some vagary, still clings to the feelers of the practical twentieth century mind), and I have never seen it. The hôtel is now covered yearly with a neat coat of yellow paint, and used as an apartment house; crowded by the usual rows of little Quarter shops: a cobbler’s, a blanchissage, a goldsmith’s on the East wing; the beaten-down door of an antiquary on the West: until its outraged painted bricks seem to bulge out over the thread of a side-walk, in continual effort to rub noses with the hôpital opposite—the only other house of any age in the street.
One peep at the garden—and you will admit it is worth it, with its lovely plaintive iris, its pale wistaria, its foolish pattering fountain—and we turn towards the Boulevard and lunch. I have said this bit of a street along which we are walking is on the boundary of the old Quarter. Alas, in these days there is no Quarter. One tries to think there is, particularly if one is a new-comer to the Left Bank, and enthusiastic; but one learns all too soon that there is not. There are students, yes, and artists; and the cafés and paintshops and pretty grisettes that go with students and artists. But the quarter of Rudolph and Mimi, of Trilby and Svengali: can you find it in steam-heated apartments, where ladies in Worth gowns pour tea? Or in the thick blue haze about the bridge and poker games at the Café du Dôme?
The Quarter has passed; there remains only its name. And that we should use with a muttered “forgive us our trespasses”; for it is the name of romance, shifted onto commonplaceness.
Yet one can still enjoy there the romance of a delicious meal for two francs fifty; and there are any number of jealously hidden places from which to choose. Let us go to Henriette’s, this tiny hole-in-the-wall, where one passes the fragrant-steaming kitchen on the way to the little room inside, and calls a greeting to the cook—an old friend—where he stands, lobster-pink and beaming, over his copper sauce-pans. Back under a patched and hoary skylight the tables are placed; and a family of mild-mannered mice clamber out over the glass to peer inquiringly at the gluttons below—who eat at one bite enough cheese to keep any decently delicate mouse for a week.
We order an omelette aux champignons, a Chateaubriand (corresponding to our tenderloin of steak) with pommes soufflés; as a separate vegetable, petits pois à la Française, and for dessert a heaping plate of wild strawberries to be eaten with one of these delectable brown pots of thick crême d’Isigny—aih! It makes one exquisitely languid only to think of it, all that luscious food! We lean back voluptuously in our stiff little chairs, and gaze about us while waiting for it.
At the half dozen tables round us are seated the modern prototypes of Rudolph and Mimi: mildly boisterous American youths from the Beaux Arts and Julien’s; careworn English spinsters with freckles and paint-smudged fingers; a Russian couple, with curious “shocked” hair and vivid, roving black eyes; a stray Frenchman or two, probably shop-keepers from the Boulevard, and a trio of models—red-lipped, torrid-eyed, sinuously round, in their sheath-fitting tailored skirts and cheap blouses. They are making a nonchalant meal off bread and cheese, and a bottle of vin ordinaire: evidently times are bad, or “ce bon garçon Harry’s” remittance has not come.
Proof of other bad times is in the charming frieze painted, in commemoration of the Queen of Hearts, by two girl artists of a former day, who worked out their over-due bill to the house in this decorative fashion. For the poverty, at least, of the traditional Quarter survives; though smothered into side streets and obscure “passages” by the self-styled “Bohemians” of Boulevards Raspail and Montparnasse. And one notices that the habitués of Henriette’s and of all the humbler restaurants have their own napkin-rings which they take from the rack as they come in; does it not save them ten centimes, an entire penny, on the charge for couvert?
They have their own tobacco too, and roll their cigarettes with care not to spill a single leaf at the process; and you feel a heartless Dives to sit smoking your fragrant Egyptians after your luxurious meal and sipping golden Bénédictine at the considerable price of forty centimes (eight cents). Our more frugal neighbours, however, show no sign of envy, or indeed of interest of any sort; their careless indifference not only to us, but to their own meal and the desultory chatter of their comrades, speaks of long and familiar experience with both. Somehow they are depressing, these Rudolphs without their velveteens, these Mimis without their flowers and other romantic trappings of poverty; the hideous modern garments of the shabbily genteel only emphasize a sordid lack of petty cash.
I suggest that we run away from them, and hie us to the lilac-bushes and bewitching bébés of the Jardin du Luxembourg; for in the realm of the great artiste even the babies contribute to the scene, and in their fascinating short frocks, and wee rose-trimmed bonnets, are a gladsome troupe of Lilliputians with whom to while away one’s melancholy. But you may have an inhuman apathy towards babies, and prefer to taxi out to St. Germain for a view of the terrace, and a glimpse en route of sadly lovely Malmaison—the memory-haunted home of Josephine. Or you may suggest the races—though I hope you won’t, because in France the sport is secondary; and mannequins are a dull race. I had rather you chose an excursion up the Seine, on one of the fussy little river-boats; though of course at St. Cloud we should be sure to find a blaring street fair in possession of the forest, and at Meudon the same: the actors must bring their booths and flying pigs into the very domain of Dame Nature herself; being no respecters of congruity where passion for the theatric is concerned.