“Yes, I have lost all sense of time. J’ai perdu le temps! Ha ha!” He grinned mysteriously. The watch had gone the way of the dress clothes some days already.
She followed him slowly along the passage, become extremely grave. “Quel original! quel genre!” With a look of perplexed distrust she watched him down the street.—This German good humour and sudden expansiveness has always been a portentous thing to French people. Latin races are as scandalized at northern amenities, the badness of our hypocrisies or manners and total immodesty displayed, as the average man of Teutonic race is with the shameful perfection of and ease in deceit shown by the French neighbour. Kreisler, still beneath the eye of the concierge, with his rhythmic martial tread, approached the restaurant. A few steps from the threshold he slowed down, dragging his long German boots, which acted as brakes.
The Restaurant Lejeune, like many others in Paris, had been originally a clean, tranquil little creamery, consisting of a small shop a few feet either way.—Then one customer after another had become more gluttonous. He had asked, in addition to his daily glass of milk, for beefsteak and spinach, or some other terrific nourishment, which the decent little business at first supplied with timid protest. But perpetual scenes of sanguine voracity—weeks of compliance with the most brutal and unbridled appetites of man—gradually brought about a change in its character.—It became frankly a place where the most carnivorous palate might be palled. As trade grew, the small business had burrowed backwards into the house—the victorious flood of commerce had burst through walls and partitions, flung down doors, discovered many dingy rooms in the interior that it instantly filled with serried cohorts of eaters. It had driven out terrified families, had hemmed the apoplectic concierge in her “loge,” it had broken out on to the court at the back in shed-like structures. And in the musty bowels of the house it had established a broiling, luridly-lighted, roaring den, inhabited by a rushing and howling band of slatternly savages.—The chef’s wife sat at a desk immediately fronting the entrance door. When a diner had finished, adding up the bill himself on a printed slip of paper, he paid it there on his way out. In the first room a tunnel-like and ill-lit recess furnished with a long table formed a cul-de-sac to the left. Into this Kreisler got. At the right-hand side the passage led to the inner rooms.
A mind feeling the need for things clean and clear cut would have been better content, although demurring, with Kreisler’s military morning suit, slashed with thick seams; carefully cut hair, short behind, a little florid and bunched on the top; his German high-crowned bowler hat, and plain cane, than the Charivari of the Art-fashion and uniform of The Brush in those about him, chiefly students from the neighbouring Art schools.
He was staring at the bill of fare when some one took the seat in front of him.—He looked up, put down the card. A young woman was sitting there, who now seemed waiting, as though Kreisler might be expected, after a rest, to take up the menu again and go on reading it.
“Have you done with⸺? May I⸺?”
At the sound of her voice he moved a little forward, and in handing it to her, spoke in German.
“Danke schön,” she said, smiling with a German nod of racial recognition.
He ordered his soup.—Usually this meal passed in surly impassible inspection of his neighbours and the newspaper. Staring at and through the figure in front of him, he spent several minutes. He seemed making up his mind.
“Monsieur est distrait aujourd’hui,” Jeanne said, who was waiting to take his order.