LIFE IN PARIS - The Lion's Share

Page 41 of 228

A little later they passed into the cafe-restaurant through a throng of seated sippers who were spread around its portals like a defence. The interior, low, and stretching backwards, apparently endless, into the bowels of the building, was swimming in the brightest light. At a raised semicircular counter in the centre two women were enthroned, plump, sedate, darkly dressed, and of middle age. To these priestesses came a constant succession of waiters, in the classic garb of waiters, bearing trays which they offered to the gaze of the women, and afterwards throwing down coins that rang on the marble of the counter. One of the women wrote swiftly in a great tome. Both of them, while performing their duties, glanced continually into every part of the establishment, watching especially each departure and each arrival.

At scores of tables were the most heterogeneous collection of people that Audrey had ever seen; men and women, girls and old men, even a few children with their mothers. Liquids were of every colour, ices chromatic, and the scarlet of lobster made a luscious contrast with the shaded tints of salads. In the extreme background men were playing billiards at three tables. Though nearly everybody was talking, no one talked loudly, so that the resulting monotone of conversation was a gentle drone, out of which shot up at intervals the crash of crockery or a hoarse command. And this drone combined itself with the glittering light, and with the mild warmth that floated in waves through the open windows, and with the red plush of the seats, and with the rosiness of painted nymphs on the blue walls, and with the complexions of women's faces, and their hats and frocks, and with the hues of the liquids--to produce a totality of impression that made Audrey dizzy with ecstasy. This was not the Paris set forth by Madame Piriac, but it was a wondrous Paris, and in Audrey's esteem not far removed from heaven.

Miss Ingate, magnificently pale, followed Tommy and Nick with ironic delight up the long passage between the tables. Her eyes seemed to be saying: "I am overpowered, and yet there is something in me that is not overpowered, and by virtue of my kind-hearted derision I, from Essex, am superior to you all!" Audrey, with glance downcast, followed Miss Ingate, and Musa came last, sinuously. Nobody looked up at them more than casually, but at intervals during the passage Tommy and Nick nodded and smiled: "How d'ye do? How d'ye do?" "_Bon soir,_" and answers were given in American or French voices.

They came to rest near the billiard tables, and near an aperture with a shelf where all the waiters congregated to shout their orders. A grey-haired waiter, with the rapidity and dexterity of a conjurer, laid a cloth over the marble round which they sat, Audrey and Miss Ingate on the plush bench, and Tommy and Nick, with Musa between them, on chairs opposite. The waiter then discussed with them for five minutes what they should eat, and he argued the problem seriously, wisely, helpfully, as befitted. It was Audrey, in full view of a buffet laden with shell-fish and fruit, who first suggested lobster, and lobster was chosen, nothing but lobster. Miss Ingate said that she was not a bit tired, and that lobster was her dream. The sentiment was universal at the table. When asked what she would drink, Audrey was on the point of answering "lemonade." But a doubt about the propriety of everlasting lemonade for a widow with much knowledge of the world, stopped her.

		Facts are counterrevolutionary. Eric Hoffer

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