CHAPTER XVIII

THE SPELL OF JUNE

My critic points out that after having been so enthusiastic about walks at nightfall and having put myself on record as to the exceptional advantages of seeing Paris in the dark on winter afternoons, rain or shine, I shall be inconsistent in extolling daylight Paris. Why the spell of June, when your walks are wholly in daylight? If it were inconsistency, being a woman I should be within my rights to ask the critic what he expected. But is it inconsistent? I think not. If I love to go out in the rain, if I enjoy city streets at night time, it does not follow that I do not enjoy good weather and the long days of June. It is another aspect of Paris that we get in our walks. We have time to go on longer excursions. We "do" the river and open spaces more than old quarters. And, best of all, in the two Junes of our early married life, we took the baby with us on our strolls. I felt the spell of June when we returned to Paris from Turkey in 1909. I felt it more when we were going back to Turkey in 1910. And ever since, the Paris June has had a charm all its own, deepening with the years. However I may like autumn and winter and spring, June is the best month. The spell is partly due to the knowledge that one is soon going off to the shore or mountains for the summer, and partly to the thought that it might be the last June. Each year we have felt that we ought to return to America in the autumn.

In the Rue Servandoni year, April and May were cold, wet months. Spring fever did not get us until June. Then we decided that all the wisdom and profit of our Paris year was not to be found in the Bibliothèque Nationale. We began to divorce ourselves from daily study by the excuse that we ought to get together a small library on Turkish history. Where could the books be bought more advantageously than on the _quais_? From the Pont des Saints-Pères to beyond Notre-Dame the parapets of the Rive Gauche are used by second-hand booksellers for the display of their wares. The _bouquinistes_ clamp wooden cases on the stone parapets. You can go for more than a mile with the certainty of finding something interesting at an astonishingly low price. There is no more delightful form of loafing in the open air. The books are an excuse. They become a habit. In order to prevent the habit from growing costly, you must make out a budget. Some days you are only "finding out what is there"; other days, before leaving home, you divest yourself of all the money in your pocketbooks and wallet except what you feel you can afford to spend. Then only are you safe! I do not know of a more insidious temptation to buy what you do not need than loitering along the _quais_ of the Rive Gauche. In a few days we spent all we could afford for Turkish history. But the afternoon walk started earlier and ended later. We never tired of the _quais_ and the river. We watched fishermen and the barges. We were amused by the men who bathe and clip dogs. We explored the streets between the Seine and the Boulevard Saint-Germain. We stood on the Pont des Arts and watched the people coming home from work. We went often into Notre-Dame. We glued our noses to the window-glass of the art print shops around the Ecole des Beaux-Arts. We selected furniture (from the side-walk!) displayed in the numerous antique shops of the Rue des Saints-Pères, the Rue Bonaparte and the Rue de Seine. We always came back at sunset, with the westward glow before us. That was when our oldest daughter got the taste of going to bed late.

The narrowest street in Paris is the Rue de Venise, which runs from the Rue Beaubourg across the Rue Saint-Martin to the Rue Quicampoix. But neither in itself nor in its location is it as picturesque as the Rue de Nevers, luring you from the Pont Neuf as you cross to the Rive Gauche. Nowhere else in Paris is one so completely held by the past as in the Rue de Nevers. Here stood the Tour de Nesle. The Mint now comes up to one side of this street for a few hundred feet, but elsewhere it is on both sides as it was in the time of Henri IV. Massive doorways, with bars of iron and peep-holes covered with grating, tell the story of a time when one relied upon himself for protection. No _agents_ in the Paris of the fifteenth century! Going down to the river from the Rue Servandoni, we always took the Rue de Nevers. In it Scrappie's carriage seemed like a full-grown vehicle. There was always the nervous fear that something would be thrown out on us from upper windows, not unjustified, as more than one narrow escape proved. We used to say that when the baby was grown up, we should enjoy taking her on one of the promenades of her infancy, and especially through the Rue de Nevers. We have shown Christine the street, and hope that she will remember it. But she will never show it to her children. Some sanitary engineer, successor of Baron Haussmann, has conceived a project of widening the Rue Dauphine. The Rue de Nevers will soon disappear. Our only hope is that the war will have delayed a long time the fulfillment of projects that mean the disappearance of what remains of mediaeval Paris.

The Parisian who goes to New York marvels at our skyscrapers. He is properly impressed with the hustle and bustle of the New World. But it does not take him long to note the absence of wide boulevards and the lack of _ensemble_ in the cityscape. Then he will invariably make two comments: "There are no trees," and "There is no place to sit down." Except the Eiffel Tower, Paris does not boast of a "biggest in the world." It will take Americans centuries to acquire a sense of harmony and proportion in city building. But shall we ever learn to bring the out-of-doors into city life? Until we do learn the big American city will be intolerable in the summer months. Paris, built on ancient foundations, has increased to a city of millions, and one still feels that an outing does not mean going to the country. Boulevards and _quais_ are lined with trees. Every open spot has grass and flowers. Best of all, when you want to sit down to read your paper or look at the crowd, there is always a bench. You do not have to go home or indoors to rest, and wherever you live, a park or boulevard is near at hand. Parisians are as closely huddled together as New Yorkers. But they can spend all their leisure time in the open. The privilege of sitting down on a bench is a blessing. All the year round you can eat or drink out of doors. I have often marveled at the criticism that the French dislike open air, simply because they, like other Europeans, do not keep their windows open at night. The Parisian lives far more in the open air than the American does. To be out of doors day and night is a natural instinct from the cradle to the grave. Trees and benches are a large part of the spell of June in Paris.

Then there were the omnibuses with their _impériales_. When we did not have the price of a cab, we could get on top of the Montsouris-Opéra or Odéon-Clichy bus, and go for a few sous from south to north across the river through the heart of Paris. We climbed to the _impériale_ of the tram at Saint-Sulpice and rode to Auteuil, on the horse-drawn omnibus from the Madeleine to the Bastille, from the Place Saint-Michel to the Gare Saint-Lazare, from the Gare Montparnasse to La Villette, from the Bourse to Passy, from the Panthéon to Courcelles. Alas! horses and _impériales_ disappeared before the war. The last omnibus with three horses abreast was the Panthéon-Courcelles line. It was replaced by closed motor-bus in 1913. Each year, when June comes round, I long for these rides. Horses, I suppose, are gone forever. But we still hope for the revival of an upper story on our motor-buses. There never was--or will be--a better way of having Paris vistas become a part of your very being.

_Foire_ means fair. But the term is used for a much more intimate and vital sort of a fair than we have. The French have big formal fairs in buildings and grounds, where a little fun is mixed in with a lot of business. But they have also small street fairs, solely for amusement, and selling street fairs, where amusements have their full share. The Paris _foires_ are a distinct institution. There is a regular schedule for them, as for Brittany _pardons_. From the end of March to the beginning of November you can always find a _foire_ in the city or the suburbs. They are held out of doors, generally in the center of a boulevard. Some of them are important institutions. In the business _foires_ you range from scrap-iron, old clothes and nicked china and disreputable furniture at the Porte Saint-Ouen and on the Boulevard Richard Lenoir to the costliest Paris has to offer on the Esplanade des Invalides and building materials and engines in the Tuileries. The purely amusement _foires_ on the Quai d'Orsay, the Boulevard de Clichy, and at Saint-Cloud stretch for blocks and are attended by all Paris. To go to them is the thing to do.

But each quarter has its _foire_, underwritten by the shop-keepers and café proprietors of the neighborhood. They are never widely heralded, you stumble upon them by chance. And if you want to see real Paris the little _foires_ give you the closest glimpse it is possible to get of Paris at play. At the _foires de quartier_ there are no onlookers. Everybody is taking part. If you do not feel the impulse to get on the merry-go-round, the dipping boats, the scenic-railway; if you are averse to having your fortune told; if you feel doubtful of your ability to throw a wooden ring around the neck of a bottle of champagne; if you are indifferent to the mysteries of the two-headed calf and the dancing cobra; if your stomach does not digest _pain d'épice_ and candy made of coal-tar; if you think your baby ought not to have a rubber-doll or a woolly lamb or a jumping rabbit made of cat's fur--for heaven's sake stay away from the _foires_!

Most of the neighborhood _foires_ are held in June. Whatever direction you take for your evening walk, your ears will give you a goal towards which to work. The merry-go-rounds have the same class of music as in America, and the tricks of the barkers--their figures of speech even--are the same. But the difference between our amusement parks and the Paris _foires_ is the spontaneous atmosphere of the _foires_, their setting improvised in the midst of the city, and the amazing childlike quality of the fun. Seven or seventy, you enjoy the wooden horses just as much. And there is no dignity to lose. You do not care a bit if your cook sees you wildly pushing a fake bicycle or standing engrossed in the front row of the crowd watching a juggler.

The glorious days of June, when we put work deliberately out of our scheme of things, furnish opportunities for excursions of a different character than those of Sunday. At the risk of being ridiculed again by my critic, who has read my praise of _repos hebdomadaire_, I must confess that Sunday has its drawbacks. The whole city is out on Sunday, and every place is crowded. Your good time is somewhat marred all day long by the anticipation of the crowded trains and trams, for a place in which you wait with much less equanimity than when you left home in the morning. On week days there are no waits and plenty of room. I can entice my husband from his work--if it is June!

It is surprising how far afield it is possible to go at little drain on your strength and pocket-book on a June week-day. We wanted just the country sometimes. Then it was the valley of Chevreuse, Villers-Cotteret, luncheon in a tree at Robinson, or the Marne between Meaux and Château-Thierry. On a very bright day one could choose the shade of Compiègne, Chantilly, Rambouillet, Versailles, Marly, Saint-Germain-en-Laye, Saint-Cloud, Fountainebleau, forests and parks incomparable. Cathedral-hungry or in a mood for the past, Amiens, Beauvais, Evreux, Dreux, Orléans, Mantes, Chartres, Sens, Troyes, Rheims, Laon, Soissons, Noyon, and Senlis are from one to three hours by train. A good luncheon at little cost is always easily found. And after lunch you have no difficulty in getting a _cocher_ to take you to the ruins of a castle or abbey for a few francs.

Inexhaustible as is the _banlieue_ of Paris you are always glad to get back. From whatever direction you return, the first you see of the great city is the Eiffel Tower. It beckons you back to the spell of June--in Paris.

1913