Margaret went alone to the house of the famous singer, for her teacher

knew by experience that it was better not to be present on such

occasions. Margaret had not even a maid with her, for except in some

queer neighbourhoods Paris is as safe as any city in the world, and it

never occurred to her that she could need protection at her age. If she

should ever have any annoyance she could call a policeman, but she had

a firm and well-founded conviction that if a young woman looked

straight before her and held her head up as if she could take care of

herself, no one would ever molest her, from London to Pekin.

It was not very far from her teacher's rooms in the Boulevard

Malesherbes to the pretty little house Madame Bonanni had built for

herself in the Avenue Hoche; so Margaret walked. It is the pleasantest

way of getting about Paris on a May morning, when one has not to go a

long distance. Paris has changed terribly of late years, but there are

moments when all her old brilliancy comes back, when the air is again

full of the intoxicating effervescence of life, when the

well-remembered conviction comes over one that in Paris the main object

of every man's and every woman's existence is to make love, to amuse

and to be amused.

Terrible things have happened, it is true; blood has

run like rain through the streets; and great works are created, great

books are written, and Art has here her workshop and her temple, her

craftsmen and her high priests. The Parisians have a right to take

themselves seriously; but we cannot--we graver, grimmer men of rougher

race. Do what they will, we can never quite believe that genius can

really hew and toil all day and laugh all night; we can never get rid

of the idea that there must be some vast delusion about Paris, some

great stage trick, some hugely clever deception by which a quicksand is

made to seem like bedrock, and a stone pavement like a river of

quicksilver.

The great cities all have faces. If all the people who live in each

city could be photographed exactly one over the other, the result would

be the general expression of that city's face. New York would be

discontented and eager; London would be stolidly glum and healthy, with

a little surliness; Berlin would be supercilious, overbearing; Rome

would be gravely resentful; and so on; but Paris would be gay,

incredulous, frivolous, pretty and impudent. The reality may be gone,

or may have changed, but the look is in her face still when the light

of a May morning shines on it.




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