Читать книгу Paris Vistas - Helen Davenport Gibbons - Страница 11

I'll sing of the days that will come,

Of the changes that many won't see,

Of the times years and years hence.

I can tell you where some of you'll be:

If you don't know I'll give you the tip.

So catch on and don't be too late:

If you do, you'll get left and you'll all lose your grip

In the year nineteen hundred and eight.

And then the chorus, as they used to sing it—that older generation—on the steps of Nassau Hall:

In nineteen hundred and eight, in nineteen hundred and eight

You can go to the moon in a two day balloon;

In nineteen hundred and eight, in nineteen hundred and eight

To the north pole you can skate,

And you'll find Annie Laurie cutting grass on the Bowery,

In nineteen hundred and eight.

After the movies we went back to the Hotel, and sat out on our balcony with the brilliant vistas of the Avenue de l'Opéra and the Boulevard des Italiens before us. We could hear the music of the opera orchestra, faintly to be sure, but it was there. The spell of six and sixteen came back. Nearly another decade had passed, but Paris was home to me, and I had a twinge of regret that we were going farther afield. Had it not been for the news of Niazi Bey and Enver taking to the mountains in a revolt against the Sultan, I might have suggested giving up Turkey.

I was glad that we would have to stay long enough to get our passports. The passport, now the indispensable vade mecum of travelers everywhere, was needed only for Rumania and Turkey and Russia ten years ago. To make up for the extravagance of the Grand Hotel we found our way to the American Embassy and the Turkish Embassy afoot. Every corner of the Champs-Elysées had brought back memories to me and I was able to point out to Herbert the guignol to which Marie had often taken my little sister and me nearly twenty years before. We stopped to listen. Some of the jokes were just the same. Judy had lost the stove-lid, and Punch told her to sit on the hole herself. And a useful and indispensable nursery household article (whose name I shall not mention) was suddenly clapped by Punch over the policeman's head in the same old way. The children laughed and clapped their hands in glee. Herbert, on his side, showed me the walk he used to take every morning from his room on the Rue d'Amsterdam by the Rue de la Boëtie and the Avenue d'Antin[A] to the Exposition of 1900, when he was writing feature stories for the Sunday edition of the New York World.

[A] The Avenue d'Antin has become since the victory in the recent war Avenue Victor Emmanuel III., in honor of Italy's intervention.

With passports obtained and visaed, tickets bought and baggage registered, we were having our last meal in Paris before taking the train for Rome. It was a late breakfast on the terrasse of the Café de la Paix. The waiter was not surprised when we ordered eggs with our coffee: but we were when we found they cost a franc apiece. As we sat there, at the most interesting vantage point in Paris for seeing the passing crowd, my childhood instinct came back with force. I cried, "O! I do want to come here to live when we return from Turkey!"

Herbert had a fellowship from Princeton for foreign study. It had been postponed a year so that he could teach for a winter at an American college in Asia Minor. Then and there we made a decision that was prophetic. All the other men were going to Germany. The German universities were a powerful attraction for American university men. The German Ph.D. was almost a sine qua non in our educational system. You could not get a Ph.D. in England or in France. Herbert gallantly sacrificed his on the spot. It was not a revolt against Kultur. Nor was it clairvoyance.

"On one's honeymoon," Herbert said, "the wife's wish should be law. The man who starts endeavoring to get the woman he has married to realize that the things to do are the things he thinks should be done gets into trouble, and stays in trouble."

The last thing we were looking for on that perfect July morning was trouble.

"All right," said he, "we'll come back and study in Paris, and if you want to live here afterwards, I guess we can find some way to do it."