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.