I looked to a distant table to see the figure he indicated
I should like to add here, before I part forever with this curious and feverish Parisian restaurant world, that my conclusion had been, after much and careful observation, that it was too utterly feverish, artificial and exotic not to be dangerous and grimly destructive if not merely touched upon at long intervals. This world of champagne drinkers was apparently interested in but two things—the flare and glow of the restaurants, which were always brightly lighted and packed with people—and women. In the last analysis women, the young women of easy virtue, were the glittering attraction; and truly one might say they were glittering. Fine feathers make fine birds, and nowhere more so than in Paris. But there were many birds who would have been fine in much less showy feathers. In many instances they craved and secured a demure simplicity which was even more destructive than the flaring costumes of the demi-monde. It was strange to see American innocence—the products of Petoskey, Michigan, and Hannibal, Missouri, cheek by jowl with the most daring and the most vicious women which the great metropolis could produce. I did not know until some time later how hard some of these women were, how schooled in vice, how weary of everything save this atmosphere of festivity and the privilege of wearing beautiful clothes.
Most people come here for a night or two, or a month or two, or once in a year or so; and then return to the comparatively dull world from which they emanated—which is fortunate. If they were here a little while this deceptive world of delight would lose all its glamour; but a very few days and you see through the dreary mechanism by which it is produced; the brow-beating of shabby waiters by greedy managers, the extortionate charges and tricks by which money is lured from the pockets of the unwary, the wretched hallrooms and garrets from which some of these butterflies emanate to wing here in seeming delight and then disappear. It was a scorching world, and it displayed vice as an upper and a nether millstone between which youth and beauty is ground or pressed quickly to a worthless mass. I would defy anybody to live in this atmosphere so long as five years and not exhibit strongly the tell-tale marks of decay. When the natural glow of youth has gone comes the powder and paint box for the face, belladonna for the eyes, rouge for the lips, palms, and the nails, and perfumes and ornament and the glister of good clothing; but underneath it all one reads the weariness of the eye, the sickening distaste for bargaining hour by hour and day by day, the cold mechanism of what was once natural, instinctive coquetry. You feel constantly that so many of these demi-mondaines would sell their souls for one last hour of delight and then gladly take poison, as so many of them do, to end it all. Consumption, cocaine and opium maintain their persistent toll. This is a furnace of desire—this Montmartre district—and it burns furiously with a hard, white-hot flame until there is nothing left save black cinders and white ashes. Those who can endure its consuming heat are welcome to its wonders until emotion and feeling and beauty are no more.
CHAPTER XXV
MONTE CARLO
All my life before going abroad I had been filled with a curiosity as to the character of the Riviera and Monte Carlo. I had never quite understood that Nice, Cannes, Mentone, San Remo in Italy and Monte Carlo were all in the same vicinity—a stone’s throw apart, as it were; and that this world is as distinct from the spirit of the north of France as the south of England is from the north of England.
As Barfleur explained it, we went due south from Paris to Marseilles and then east along the coast of the Mediterranean until we came to the first stopping-place he had selected, Agay, where we would spend a few days in peace and quiet, far from the hurry and flare of the café life we had just left, and then journey on the hour or two more which it takes to reach Monte Carlo. He made this arrangement in order that we might have the journey through France by day, and proceed from Agay of a morning, which would give us, if we had luck—and such luck usually prevails on the Riviera—a sunlight view of the Mediterranean breaking in rich blue waves against a coast that is yellow and brown and gold and green by turns.
Coming south from Paris I had the same sensation of wonder that I had traveling from Calais to Paris—a wonder as to where the forty odd millions of the population of France kept itself. It was not visible from the windows of the flying train. All the way we traveled through an almost treeless country past little white lawns and vineyards; and I never realized before, although I must have known, that these same vineyards were composed of separate vines, set in rows like corn stalks and standing up for all the world like a gnarled T. Every now and then a simple, straight-running, silvery stream would appear, making its way through a perfectly level lane and set on either bank with tall single lines of feathery poplars. The French landscape painters have used these over and over; and they illustrate exactly the still, lonely character of the country. To me, outside of Paris, France has an atmosphere of silence and loneliness; although, considering the character of the French people I do not understand how that can be.
On the way south there was much badinage between Barfleur and Sir Scorp, who accompanied us, as to the character of this adventure. A certain young friend of Barfleur’s daughter was then resident at Lyons; and it was Barfleur’s humorously expressed hope, that his daughter’s friend would bring him a basket of cold chicken, cake, fruit, and wine. It seems that he had urged Berenice to write her friend that he was passing through; and I was hourly amused at Scorp’s biting reference to Barfleur’s “parental ruse,” which he vindictively hoped would come to nothing. It was as he hoped; for at Lyons the young lady and her parents appeared, but no basket. There were some minutes of animated conversation on the platform; and then we were off again at high speed through the same flat land, until we reached a lovely mountain range in the south of France—a region of huts and heavy ox-wains. It reminded me somewhat of the mountain regions of northern Kentucky. At Marseilles there was a long wait in the dark. A large number of passengers left the train here; and then we rode on for an hour or two more, arriving by moonlight at Agay, or at least the nearest railway station to it.