shops opposite. Set in the small windows above the shops, the modistes’ assistants seemed to be talking and talking. Some had hats in their nimble hands, some other things. It is pleasant, maybe it is the only pleasant pastime that does not ever pall, to see and not be seen. And now the shop windows began one and all to glitter in the stormy brittle sunlight which transmuted the pearls and diamonds on yellow velvet into celestial jewels fit to adorn the crown of the word
printemps, than which there is not a more beautiful word in all the languages of the world. In the great window of Edouard Apel et Cie., whence in the long ago had come to this person such polite but manly notepaper, stood richly white and coloured papers, boxes of lacquer, ebony, and cedarwood, flaming quills and great cut-glass bottles for ink, and many another devise to make one realise how pleasant writing must be for those who do not have to write. Before a shop not far from Tecla’s which displayed the most charming baubles of all and completely deceived the sun, two short dark Semitic men and a lanky Semitic youth were having some difficulty with their shutters. The shutters did not look new, far from new, but maybe, I thought, a new burglarproof arrangement has been wrought on them, and that would be causing the difficulty. The traffic had as yet but caressed the rue de la Paix, and through the open window one might hear the rising anger of the two short Semitic men with the lanky Semitic youth, an anger which seemed to call for and to attain a cuneiform language. Then a fourth man, also in shirtsleeves, came out of the shop, a patriarchal mountain of a man with a great black beard and a mighty nose, who might that very moment have come from a breakfast of dates in a tent over against Ur of the Chaldees, and instantly I knew him for what he was, a millionaire. Many were the racehorses he owned, and often you would see him at Longchamps, talking to a beautiful woman in a deep voice about himself, for that was a vain and terrible man, and the worst of it was that he was always right about everything, whether it was a horse, a jewel, a woman, an antique, or the fall of a card. With one look of his eye he scattered the two short Semites and the lanky Semitic youth, who were his two brothers and his son, who were also millionaires, and in a trice he had those shutters off that window, and lo! there, royally alone against terraces of dingy green velvet, sat a brown Buddha with what looked like the largest emerald in the world in the middle of his forehead, but maybe it was only the second largest. The last time I had been in Paris there had been a golden chair in that window, golden arms and legs and back and sit-piece and all, and so it was no wonder that that man owned racehorses and said “Banquo!” to half-a-million francs while yawning, and rightly, for he always won, as I know to my cost. And one night he had come into the rooms at Cannes with a great ruby on his finger. Only he would, of course, but apart from the ethics of the thing it was an amazing ruby, crimson as blood and clear as a glass of Burgundy. “But what a stone!” cried Billee Ponthéveque, a cocotte who sat at the table losing all the money that she earned by breaking every Commandment but one, for she adored her father and mother and never failed to put aside for them as much as she gave in tips to the croupiers; but she never saw her parents, she would say, because of a funny idea they had that it was bad for her health to take cocaine on an empty stomach. “Yes, it is flawless,” said the deep voice of that terrible man, shouting “Banquo!” as an afterthought to some poor devil who thought he was going to get away unchallenged with fifty thousand francs. “You can have it, child. Here you are.” But Billee Ponthéveque had always a sense of the proprieties, and so, as the saying is among the vulgar, she damned his blasted cheek for offering her so valuable a present in public, but he said that made no matter, for it was just because the ruby was flawless that it was quite valueless. “If only it had the smallest flaw,” he boomed, “it would be beyond price, for anyone can counterfeit a flawless ruby so that no expert can tell it from the original. …”
“De la par de Madame Arpenden,” said a voice, and after the passage of curses and catcalls which are peculiar to the telephones of Paris, I heard Venice’s voice.
“Venice! Venice!”
“That will do,” she said. “Oh, that will do from you, thanks very much. Naps told me he saw you last night in that odd place, but did I see you?”
“You were asleep, Venice! But I am so glad to hear your voice after all these months, you wouldn’t believe how glad. Venice, how are you?”
“I can’t tell you now, I have to buy things. Listen, child, will you give me lunch today? Naps is busy for lunch. Listen, you must give me lunch today. I hate Paris.”
“But Napier told me you were going South today!”
“Oh, Naps is mad!” A boyish voice, a very boyish voice Venice had, even on a telephone in Paris. “Not dangerously mad, but just mad. I never knew such a silly, one can’t ever arrange anything beforehand with him. We are going by the evening train now, though we had everything booked for the one this morning. Listen, are you going to give me lunch? Oh that’s a dear. About one, here at the Meurice. …”
“Venice!” I called, but
