A guide, for a franc or two, took us high up into the organ-loft and out upon a narrow balustrade leading about the roof. Below, all France was spread out; the city of Amiens, its contour, was defined accurately. You could see some little stream, the Somme, coming into the city and leaving it. Wonderful figures of saints and devils were on every hand. We were shown a high tower in which a treaty between France and Spain had been signed. I looked down into the great well of the nave inside and saw the candles glowing like gold and the people moving like small bugs across the floor. It was a splendid confirmation of the majesty of man, the power of his ideals, the richness and extent of his imagination, the sheer ability of his hands. I would not give up my fleeting impression of Amiens for anything that I know.
* * * * *
As we came away from the cathedral in the dusk we walked along some branch or canal of the Somme, and I saw for the first time the peculiar kind of boat or punt used on French streams—a long affair, stub-pointed at either end. It was black and had somewhat the effect of a gondola. A Frenchman in baggy corduroy trousers and soft wool cap pulled over one ear was poling it along. It contained hay piled in a rude mass. It was warm here, in spite of the fact that it was the middle of January, and there was a feeling of spring in the air. Barfleur informed me that the worst of winter in Paris appeared between January fifteenth and the middle of March, that the spring did not really show itself until the first of April or a little later.
“You will be coming back by then,” he said, “and you will see it in all its glory. We will go to Fontainebleau and ride.” That sounded very promising to me.
I could not believe that these dull cobble-stone streets through which we were passing were part of a city of over ninety thousand, and that there was much manufacturing here. There were so few people in sight. It had a gray, shut-up appearance—none of the flow and spirit of the towns of the American Middle West. It occurred to me at once that, though I might like to travel here, I should never like to live here. Then we reached the railway station again.
CHAPTER XXI
PARIS!
There is something about the French nation which, in spite of its dreary-looking cities, exhibits an air of metropolitan up-to-dateness. I don’t know where outside of America you will find the snap and intensity of emotion, ambition, and romance which you find everywhere in French streets. The station, when we returned to it, was alive with a crowd of bustling, hurrying people, buying books and papers at news-stands, looking after their luggage in the baggage-room, and chattering to the ticket-sellers through their windows. A train from Paris was just in and they were hurrying to catch that; and as I made my first French purchase—twenty centimes’ worth of post-cards of Amiens—our train rolled in. It was from the North—such a long train as you frequently see in America, with cars labeled Milan, Trieste, Marseilles, Florence, and Rome. I could hardly believe it, and asked Barfleur as he bustled about seeing that the luggage was put in the proper carriage, where it came from. He thought that some of these cars started from St. Petersburg and others from Denmark and Holland. They had a long run ahead of them yet—over thirty hours to Rome, and Paris was just one point in their journey. We crowded into one car—stuffy with luggage, its windows damp with human breath, various nationalities occupying the section—and disposed of our grips, portmanteaus, rugs and so on, as best we could. I slipped the bustling old facteur a franc—not so much because he deserved it, but because he had such a gay and rakish air. His apron swung around his legs like a skirt, and his accordion-plaited cap was lolling gaily over one ear. He waved me a smiling farewell and said something in French which I wished I could understand. Then I realized for the first time what a pity it is not to understand the language of the country in which you are traveling.
As the train sped on through the dark to Paris I fell to speculating on the wonders I was to see. Barfleur was explaining to me that in order to make my entrance into Paris properly gay and interesting, we were to dine at the Café de Paris and then visit the Folies-Bergère and afterwards have supper at the Abbaye Thélème.
I should say here that of all people I know Barfleur is as capable of creating an atmosphere as any—perhaps more so. The man lives so heartily in his moods, he sets the stage for his actions long beforehand, and then walks on like a good actor and plays his part thoroughly. All the way over—from the very first day we met in New York, I think—he was either consciously or unconsciously building up for me the glamour of smart and artistic life in Europe. Now these things are absolutely according to your capacity to understand and appreciate them; they are, if you please, a figment of the brain, a frame of mind. If you love art, if you love history, if the romance of sex and beauty enthralls you, Europe in places presents tremendous possibilities. To reach these ethereal paradises of charm, you must skip and blink and dispense with many things. All the long lines of commonplaces through which you journey must be as nothing. You buy and prepare and travel and polish and finally you reach the center of this thing which is so wonderful; and then, when you get there, it is a figment of your own mind. Paris and the Riviera are great realities—there are houses and crowds and people and great institutions and the remembrance and flavor of great deeds; but the thing that you get out of all this for yourself is born of the attitude or mood which you take with you. Toward gambling, show, romance, a delicious scene, Barfleur carries a special mood. Life is only significant because of these things. His great struggle is to avoid the dingy and the dull, and to escape if possible the penalties of encroaching age. I think he looks back on the glitter of his youth with a pathetic eye, and I know he looks forward into the dark with stoic solemnity. Just one hour of beauty, is his private cry, one more day of delight. Let the future take care of itself. He realizes, too, with the keenness of a realist, that if youth is not most vivid in yourself, it can sometimes be achieved through the moods of others. I know he found in me a zest and a curiosity and a wonder which he was keen to satisfy. Now he would see this thing over as he had seen it years before. He would observe me thrill and marvel, and so he would be able to thrill and marvel himself once more. He clung to me with delicious enthusiasm, and every now and then would say, “Come now, what are you thinking? I want to know. I am enjoying this as much as you are.” He had a delicious vivacity which acted on me like wine.