Booth Tarkington

“ It was partly of these poor infants I had thought when I took what was left of my small inheritance to Monte Carlo, hoping, since I seemed to be incapable of increasing it in any other way, that number seventeen and black would hand me over a fortune as a waiter does wine. Alas! Luck is not always a fool’s servant, and the kind of fortune she handed me was of that species the waiter brings you in the other bottle of champagne, the gold of a bubbling brain, lasting an hour. ”

“ It is a type which has grown more and more familiar to us, yet never less strange: the man in costly but severe costume, big, with a necessary great waistcoat, not noticing the loudness of his own voice; as ignorant of the thousand tiny things which we observe and feel as he would be careless of them (except for his wife) if he knew. We laugh at him, sometimes even to his face, and he does not perceive it. We are a little afraid that he is too large to see it; hence too large for us to comprehend, and in spite of our laughter we are always conscious of a force—yes, of a presence! ”

“ At last when he, with the coffee and cigarettes, took the knife in his hand, he placed a veil over the point. He began, laughingly, with the picture of a pickpocket he had helped to catch in London. London was greatly inhabited by pickpockets, according to Antonio’s declaration. Yet, he continued, it was nothing in comparison to Paris. Paris was the rendezvous, the world’s home, for the criminals, adventurers, and rascals if the world, English, Spanish, South-Americans, North-Americans,—and even Italians! One must beware of people one had met in Paris! ”

“ As for that old Antonio, he might have known enough to beware. I had been timid with him always, and he counted on it now, but a man who has shown a painted head-top to the people of Paris will dare a great deal.
“As the Prince says,” replied Mrs. Landry, with many flutters, “one meets only the most agreeable people in Paris!”
“Paris!” I exclaimed. “Ah, that home of ingenuity! How they paint there! How they live, and how they dye—their beards!” ”

“ For Antonio could talk. At that time he spoke English even better than I, though without some knowledge of the North-American idiom which my travels with Poor Jr. had given me. He was one of those splendid egoists who seem to talk in modesty, to keep themselves behind scenes, yet who, when the curtain falls, are discovered to be the heroes, after all, though shown in so delicate a fashion that the audience flatters itself in the discovery. ”

“ To hear a voice which speaks two sentences of pity and silver is to have a chime of bells in the heart. But to have a shaven head is to be a monk! And to have a shaven head with a sign painted upon it is to be a pariah. ”

“ I made no repartee, continuing to sit with my chin dependent upon my cravat, but with things not the same in my heart as formerly to the arrival of that grey pongee, the grey glove, and the beautiful voice.
Since King Charles the Mad, in Paris no one has been completely free from lunacy while the spring-time is happening. There is something in the sun and the banks of the Seine. The Parisians drink sweet and fruity champagne because the good wines are already in their veins. These Parisians are born intoxicated and remain so; it is not fair play to require them to be like other human people. ”

“ Since I am no more than a joke, I can be of no service to your father or to you; but you must not think that I am so unreasonable as to be angry with you. A man whom you have beheld reduced to what I was, at the Cafe’ de la Paix, is surely a joke to the whole world! ”

“ To an Italian it seems that many North-Americans and English seek too often the assistance of the nose in talking, though in different manners, each equally unagreeable to our ears. The intelligent among our lazzaroni of Naples, who beg from tourists, imitate this, with the purpose of reminding the generous traveller of his home, in such a way to soften his heart. But there is some difference: the Italian, the Frenchman, or German who learns English sometimes misunderstands the American: the Englishman he sometimes understands.
This voice that spoke was North-American. Ah, what a voice! ”

“ Nothing could have been more painful to my sensitiveness than to occupy myself, confused with blushes, at the center of the whole world as a living advertisement of the least amusing ballet in Paris.
To be the day’s sensation of the boulevards one must possess an eccentricity of appearance conceived by nothing short of genius ”

“ I had no heart to urge my friend. For us the whole of Venice had become one bridge of sighs, and we sat in the shade of the piazza, not watching the pigeons, and listening very little to the music. There are times when St. Mark’s seems to glare at you with Byzantine cruelty, and Venice is too hot and too cold. So it was then. Evening found us staring out at the Adriatic from the terrace of a cafe’ on the Ledo, our coffee cold before us. ”

“ One has heard that the North Americans invent the most singular advertising, but I will not believe they surpass the Parisian. Myself, I say I cannot express my sufferings under the notation of the crowds that moved about the Cafe’ de la Paix! The French are a terrible people when they laugh sincerely. It is not so much the amusing things which cause them amusement; it is often the strange, those contrasts which contain something horrible, and when they laugh there is too frequently some person who is uncomfortable or wicked. ”

“ Then I called for writing-papers and wrote to the good Mother Superior and my dear little nieces at their convent. I enclosed two hundred and fifty francs, which sum I had fallen behind in my payments for their education and sustenance, and I felt a moment’s happiness that at least for a while I need not fear that my poor brother’s orphans might become objects of charity—a fear which, accompanied by my own hunger, had led me to become the joke of the boulevards. ”

“ In my agony that she should know, I could do nothing but seek greater darkness. I felt myself beaten, dizzy with beatings. That thing which I had done in Paris discredited me. A man whose head-top had borne an advertisement of the Folie-Rouge to think he could be making a combat with the Prince Caravacioli! ”

“ I cried, raising my voice. “He is wise beyond his years, this youth! He will be great when he reaches middle age, for he knows Paris and understands North America! Like myself, he is grateful that the people of your continent enrich our own! We need all that you can give us! Where should we be—any of us” (I raised my voice still louder and waved my hand to Antonio) ,—“where should we be, either of us” (and I bowed to the others) “without you?”
Mrs. Landry rose with precipitousness, and the beautiful lady, very red, followed. ”

“ His air was uninterruptedly mild and modest; he rarely lifted his eyes, but to my most earnest argument replied only by ordering more eggs and saying in a chastened voice:
“Oh no; it is always best to begin school with a vacation. To Longchamps—we!”
I should say at once that through this young man I soon became an amateur of the remarkable North-American idioms, of humour and incomparable brevities often more interesting than those evolved by the thirteen or more dialects of my own Naples. ”

“ To fall in love must one behold a face? Yes; at thirty. At twenty, when one is something of a poet—No: it is sufficient to see a grey pongee skirt! At fifty, when one is a philosopher—No: it is enough to perceive a soul! ”

“ I saw you at the Cafe’ de la Paix, and even then I knew that it was shaved, not naturally bald. When you came here I recognized you like a shot, and that was why I was glad to accept you as a guardian. I’ve enjoyed myself considerably of late, and you’ve been the best part of it,—I think you are a wonderation! I wouldn’t have any other governess for the world, but you surpass the orchestra when you beg me to respect your years! I will bet you four dollars to a lead franc piece that you are younger than I am! ”

“ Early the whole of the next day, endeavoring to look preoccupied, I haunted the lobbies and vicinity of the most expensive hotels, unable to do any other thing, but ashamed of myself that I had not returned to my former task of seeking employment, although still reassured by possession of two louis and some silver, I dined well at a one-franc coachman’s restaurant, where my elegance created not the slightest surprise, and I felt that I might live in this way indefinitely. ”

“ Fifty francs will continue life in the body of a judicial person a long time in Paris, and combining that knowledge and the good goulasch, I sought diligently for “Mamies” and “Sadies” with a revived spirit. I found neither of those adorable names—in fact, only two such diminutives, which are more charming than our Italian ones: A Miss Jeanie Archibald Zip and a Miss Fannie Sooter. None of the names was harmonious with the grey pongee—in truth, most of them were no prettier (however less processional) than royal names. I could not please myself that I had come closer to the rare lady ”

“ I had much to pay Antonio for myself, more for my father, most for my mother. This was why that last of all the world I would have wished that old fortune-hunter to know how far I had been reduced!
Then I rejoiced about that change which my unreal baldness produced in me, giving me a look of forty years instead of twenty-four, so that my oldest friend must take at least three stares to know me. Also, my costume would disguise me from the few acquaintances I had in Paris (if they chanced to cross the Seine) , as they had only seen me in the shabbiest ”

“ In spite of this extreme propinquity, I feared the collector would fall into the water when he received the offering of Poor Jr. It was “Gra-a-az’, Mi-lor! Graz’!” a hundred times, with bows and grateful smiles indeed!
It is the one place in the world where you listen to a bad voice with pleasure, and none of the voices are good—they are harsh and worn with the night-singing—yet all are beautiful because they are enchanted.
They sang some of our own Neapolitan songs that night, and last of all the loveliest of all, “La Luna Nova.” ”

“ Never before was such a voice!
“Why did you stop, Rufus?” it said.
“Look!” replied the American trousers; so that I knew the pongee lady had not observed me of herself.
Instantaneously there was an exclamation, and a pretty grey parasol, closed, fell at my feet. It is not the pleasantest to be an object which causes people to be startled when they behold you; but I blessed the agitation of this lady, for what caused her parasol to fall from her hand was a start of pity.
“Ah!” she cried. “The poor man!” ”

“ The greatest of my own had not saved me from the decoration of the past week, yet he was as much mine as he was Antonio Caravacioli’s; and Antonio, though impoverished, had his motor-car and dined well, since I happened to see, in my perusal of the journal, that he had been to dinner the evening before at the English Embassy with a great company. “Bravo, Antonio! Find a rich foreign wife if you can, since you cannot do well for yourself at home!” ”

“ However, dreams often conclude abruptly, and two louis always do, as I found, several days later, when, after paying the rent for my unspeakable lodging and lending twenty francs to a poor, bad painter, whom I knew and whose wife was ill, I found myself with the choice of obtaining funds on my finery or not eating, either of which I was very loath to do. It is not essential for me to tell any person that when you seek a position it is better that you appear not too greatly in need of it ”

“ Their deepest feeling is for the arts; and, as everyone had declared, they are farceurs in their tragedies, tragic in their comedies. They prepare the last epigram in the tumbril; they drown themselves with enthusiasm about the alliance with Russia. ”

“ Now, by chance, meeting this person in the street, it developed that he had need of a man, precisely such a one as you are not: a sober, tutorish, middle-aged, dissenting parson, to trot about the Continent tied to a dancing bear. It is the old gentleman’s cub, who is a species of Caliban in fine linen, and who has taken a few too many liberties in the land of the free. ”