ONCE I was in Paris again. It was delightful¹, for now it was spring, or nearly so, and the weather was pleasant. People were pouring into the city in droves from all over the world. It was nearly midnight when I arrived. My trunk, which I had sent on ahead, was somewhere in the limbo² of advance trunks and I had a hard time getting it. Parisian porters and depot³ attendants know exactly when to lose all understanding of English and all knowledge of the sign language. It is when the search for anything becomes the least bit irksome. The tip they expect to get from you spurs them on a little way, but not very far. Let them see that the task promises to be somewhat wearisome and they disappear entirely⁴. I lost two facteurs in this way, when they discovered that the trunk was not ready to their hand, and so I had to turn in and search among endless trunks myself. When I found it, a facteur was quickly secured to truck it out to a taxi. And, not at all wonderful to relate, the first man I had employed now showed up to obtain his pourboire. “Oh, here you are!” I exclaimed, as I was getting into my taxi. “Well, you can go to the devil!” He pulled a long face. That much English he knew.
 
When I reached the hotel in Paris I found Barfleur registered there but not yet returned to his room. But several letters of complaint were awaiting me: Why hadn’t I telegraphed the exact hour of my arrival; why hadn’t I written fully⁵? It wasn’t pleasant to wait in uncertainty⁶. If I had only been exact, several things508 could have been arranged for this day or evening. While I was meditating⁷ on my sins of omission⁸ and commission, a chasseur bearing a note arrived. Would I dress and come to G.’s Bar. He would meet me at twelve. This was Saturday night, and it would be good to look over Paris again. I knew what that meant. We would leave the last restaurant in broad daylight, or at least the Paris dawn.
 
Coming down on the train from Brussels I had fallen into a blue funk—a kind of mental miasma—one of the miseries⁹ Barfleur never indulged in. They almost destroy me. Barfleur never, in so far as I could see, succumbed¹⁰ to the blues¹¹. In the first place my letter of credit was all but used up—my funds were growing terrifyingly low; and it did not make me any more cheerful to realize that my journey was now practically at an end. A few more days and I would be sailing for home.
 
When, somewhat after twelve, I arrived at G.’s Bar I was still a little doleful. Barfleur was there. He had just come in. That indescribable Parisian tension—that sense of life at the topmost level of nervous strength and energy—was filling this little place. The same red-jacketed musicians; the same efficient, inconspicuous, attentive¹³ and courteous¹⁴ waiters; Madame G., placid¹⁵, philosophic¹⁶, comfy, businesslike and yet motherlike, was going to and fro, pleasingly arrayed, looking no doubt after the interests, woes¹⁷, and aspirations¹⁸ of her company of very, very bad but beautiful “girls.” The walls were lined with life-loving patrons of from twenty-five to fifty years of age, with their female companions. Barfleur was at his best. He was once more in Paris—his beloved Paris. He beamed on me in a cheerful, patronizing way.
 
“So there you are! The Italian bandits didn’t waylay²⁰ you, even if they did rob you, I trust? The German Empire didn’t sit too heavily on you? Holland and509 Switzerland must have been charming as passing pictures. Where did you stop in Amsterdam?”
 
“At the Amstel.”
 
“Quite right. An excellent hotel. I trust Madame A. was nice to you?”
 
“She was as considerate as she could be.”
 
“Right and fitting. She should have been. I saw that you stopped at the National, in Lucerne. That is one of the best hotels in Europe. I was glad to see that your taste in hotels was not falling off.”
 
We began with appetizers²¹, some soup, and a light wine. I gave a rough summary of some things I had seen, and then we came to the matter of my sailing date and a proposed walking trip in England.
 
“Now, I’ll tell you what I think we should do and then you can use your own judgment,” suggested Barfleur. “By the time we get to London, next Wednesday or Tuesday, England will be in prime condition. The country about Dorchester will be perfect. I suggest that we take a week’s walk, anyway. You come to Bridgely Level—it is beautiful there now—and stay a week or ten days. I should like you to see how charming it is about my place in the spring. Then we will go to Dorchester. Then you can come back to Bridgely Level. Why not stay in England and write this summer?”
 
I put up a hand in serious opposition²². “You know I can’t do that. Why, if I had so much time, we might as well stay over here and settle down in—well, Fontainebleau. Besides, money is a matter of prime consideration with me. I’ve got to buckle²³ down to work at once at anything that will make me ready money. I think in all seriousness I had best drop the writing end of the literary profession for a while anyway and return to the editorial desk.”
 
The geniality²⁴ and romance that lightened Barfleur’s eye,510 as he thought of the exquisite²⁵ beauty of England in the spring, faded, and his face became unduly²⁶ severe.
 
“Really,” he said, with a grand air, “you discourage me. At times, truly, I am inclined to quit. You are a man, in so far as I can see, with absolutely no faith in yourself—a man without a profession or an appropriate feeling for his craft. You are inclined, on the slightest provocation²⁷, to give up. You neither save anything over from yesterday in the shape of satisfactory reflection nor look into the future with any optimism. Do, I beg of you, have a little faith in the future. Assume that a day is a day, wherever it is, and that so long as it is not in the past it has possibilities. Here you are a man of forty; the formative portion of your life is behind you. Your work is all indicated and before you. Public faith such as my own should have some weight with you and yet after a tour of Europe, such as you would not have reasonably contemplated²⁹ a year ago, you sink down supinely and talk of quitting. Truly it is too much. You make me feel very desperate. One cannot go on in this fashion. You must cultivate some intellectual stability around which your emotions can center and settle to anchor.”
 
“Fairest Barfleur,” I replied, “how you preach! You have real oratorical³⁰ ability at times. There is much in what you say. I should have a profession, but we are looking at life from slightly different points of view. You have in your way a stable base, financially speaking. At least I assume so. I have not. My outlook, outside of the talent you are inclined to praise, is not very encouraging. It is not at all sure that the public will manifest the slightest interest in me from now on. If I had a large bump of vanity and the dull optimism of the unimaginative, I might assume anything and go gaily³¹ on until I ............