VIII
Before the bookstall in the entrance to the Café Royal, Paul stood on the following night, with Jules Thessaly and Don.
"I shall never cease to regret Kirchner," said Thessaly. "He popularised thin legs, and so many women have them. Ha, Mario! here you are again on the front page of a perfectly respectable weekly journal, just alighting from the train. You look like an intelligent baboon, and your wife will doubtless instruct Nevin directly her attention is drawn to this picture. It creates an impression that she was not sober at the time. What a public benefactor was he who introduced popular illustrated journalism. He brought all the physical deformities of the great within reach of the most modest purse."
"It is very curious," said Don, "but you do not appear in the photograph, Mr. Thessaly. You appear in none that I have seen."
"Modesty is a cloak, Captain Courtier, which can even defy the camera. Let us inhale the gratifying odour, suggestive of truffles frying in oil, which is the hall-mark of your true café, and is as ambergris in the nostrils of the gourmand. Do you inhale it?"
"It is unavoidable," replied Paul. "The triumph of Continental cookery rests upon a basis of oil."
"We will bathe in the unctuous fumes. Enter, my friends."
Passing the swing-door they entered the café, which was full as usual, so that at first it seemed as though they would find no accommodation.
"Twenty-five per cent of elbows are nudging fifty per cent of ribs," said Thessaly, "and ninety per cent of eyes are staring at Paul Mario. Personally, my extreme modesty would revolt. I once endeavoured to visualise Fame and the resultant picture was that of a huge room filled with pretty women, all of whom watched me with the fixed gaze of nascent love. It was exquisite but embarrassing. I think there is a table near the corner, on the right, a spot sanctified by the frequent presence of Jacob Epstein. Let us intrude."
They made their way to the table indicated by Thessaly, and the curious sudden silence which notability imposes upon the ordinary marked their progress. Paul's handsome olive face became the focus of a hundred glances. Several people who were seated with their backs toward the entrance, half rose to look covertly at him as he walked in. They seated themselves at the marble-topped table, Don and Paul upon the plush lounge and Thessaly upon a chair facing them. "I have a mirror before me," said Thessaly, "and can stare without fear of rebuke. Yonder is a group of Johnsons."