From all Wilbur had reported and explained to him, and from his own judgment of Berg, and from the meeting, Orville had his suspicions absolved, his mind put to rest. He was ready to proceed with Wilbur and as Wilbur directed. “Our friends F [Flint & Company] and B [Berg] are not in the bandit crew,” Orville was glad to assure Katharine.
Wilbur led Orville on a first stroll through the Louvre and to celebrate Orville’s arrival in Paris, Frank Cordley hosted an evening at the legendary and highly expensive Tour d’Argent by the Seine on the Left Bank, where a table-side preparation of duck, canard au sang, the main course, performed by the restaurant’s celebrated owner-chef, Frédéric Delair, seems to have made a far greater impression on Orville than anything he had seen at the Louvre. Delair worked in a formal tailcoat and with his flowing side whiskers and pince-nez eyeglasses, looked, as Orville would report to Katharine, more like a college professor than a chef and had a way of swinging his head as he carved up the duck into small pieces that in itself was worth the full price.
The legs, wings, etc., [Orville continued] are sent to another room where we cannot see them receiving the finishing touches; but the carcass, after most of the meat has been removed is put in a fancy press, and all the juice and marrow extracted. The meat and juices are then placed over the alcohol flame and cooked together. Mr. Frederic basting the meat the entire time. Finally the duck is served with the enclosed card and folder which gives the serial number of the duck we ate.
When, in a letter, Bishop Wright expressed dire warnings over the temptations of Paris, Wilbur wrote to assure him they would do nothing to disgrace the training they had received at home, and that all the wine he had tasted thus far would not fill a single glass. “We have been real good over here,” Orville added. “We have been in a lot of the big churches and haven’t got drunk yet.”
Their prospects in France were at a low ebb, thanks in large part to the number of government officials departing for their customary August vacations. But with interest in Germany still active, Wilbur and Berg decided to leave for Berlin, departing August 4.
On the way to Berlin, seeing a sign from the train window of the small town of Jemappes in Belgium, Wilbur began talking about the historic battle fought there in 1792, and, to Berg’s amazement, went on at length about the importance of the victory won by the army of the infant French Republic over the regular Austrian army. It was for Berg yet another example of the extraordinary reach of Wilbur’s mind. He had read about it in his youth, Wilbur explained.
A week later, when Charlie Taylor arrived, Orville had him check into a less conspicuous hotel on the rue d’Alger, around the corner from the Meurice, and register simply as C. E. Taylor of Lincoln, Nebraska. “We do not want the papers or anyone here to know that he has come over,” Orville wrote Katharine. In the time since Orville’s arrival the press had been following the brothers everywhere, and it was becoming ever more bothersome.
To the reporters the brothers were like no one they had ever tried to cover. A correspondent for the London Daily Mail told Orville he was “the toughest proposition” newspapermen had yet run up against. He himself, said the correspondent, had already spent more money on cab fares trying to learn what the brothers were up to than he could ever hope to recover, but that he could not give up for fear some other reporter would get the “scoop.”
In mid-August, when it looked as though French interest in an agreement had revived, Wilbur and Berg returned from Berlin. Still there was no real progress with the French. Nor had there been with the Germans.
By early September the brothers had little to do but bide their time, and to judge from what Orville recorded, they had become occupied primarily with sitting in the park watching the passing parade. If Wilbur had his Louvre, Orville had the garden of the Tuileries.
“You need not worry about me missing the use of the front porch,” Orville wrote to Katharine, “I spend at least half of my time while awake in the park across from the hotel.” There were hundreds of little iron chairs in the park, the rent for which was 2 cents a day, he explained. “A number of women are employed in going about to pounce down on every unsuspecting chap that happens to be occupying a chair and to collect the two cents.”
He especially enjoyed watching the French children, amazed by how well behaved they were. He described the small merry-go-rounds, each operated by a man turning a crank, and thought it was pathetic that the children could so enjoy something so tame, hanging on as if riding a bucking bronco. Then, every so often, along would come some American children to liven things up.
They jump on and off the horses while the affair is going at full speed—which is never fast—seize the rings by the handful, which they are supposed to spear one at a time with an ice pick, and when the ride is over begin tossing the ice picks (I don’t know what they are called here) about among themselves when the man comes to collect them, till the poor fellow that runs the affair is driven nearly crazy.
“Of course, we feel ashamed of the youngsters,” he added, “and know that they need a good thrashing, but it does seem pleasant to have something once in a while that is a little more exciting.”
Greatest by far was the spectacle of seeing so many—children, men, and women of all ages—playing with “diabolo,” a simple, age-old toy that had lately become all the rage. It consisted of a wooden spool the shape of an hourglass and two bamboo sticks about two feet in length, joined by a string four to five feet in length, and it cost about 50 cents. The player would slip the string around the spool, then, a stick in each hand, lift the spool from the ground and start it spinning and by spinning it faster, keep it balanced in the air. It was because the spool would so often fall to the ground, until the beginner got the knack, that it was called “the devil’s game.” It had originated in China a hundred years or more earlier, and to the brothers it was irresistible.
The whole course of their lives, they liked to say, had begun in childhood with a toy, and a French toy at that, and now here they were in middle age in France, enjoying themselves no less than if they were children still.
With the diabolo the magic was not that the toy itself flew, as did Alphonse Pénaud’s helicopter. Here you yourself had to overcome the force of gravity with skill. You had to learn the trick by practice, and more practice, with the sticks and string, to keep the spool flying—just as an airplane was not enough in itself, one had to master the art of flying.