Classic Love: 7 Vintage Romances (40 page)

When they went downstairs Iris took her letters and postcards to the desk.
“Bonjour,
Pierre,” she said to the concierge.

“Bonjour,
Mademoiselle.
Comment Ça va aujourd’hui?”

“Merci, très bien. Je passe un bon moment.”

He smiled appreciatively, and his glance went beyond her to Louisa, who was waiting on a small chaise.

“Bonjour,
Madame. Your niece speaks our language very well.”

He stamped the letters and the postcards, told Iris the amount of the postage, and wished them a pleasant day.

“You do manage the language beautifully,” Louisa said admiringly, as they walked down the Rue Castiglione.

“Only passably, shame on me. Mostly, I say everything in the present tense. If I lived here, though, I’d pick it up quickly.”

“Would you like to live here?”

“Yes,” Iris said promptly. “Oh, I know I’m seeing only the bright side of the coin. Visitors always do. They don’t notice the
clochards,
the winos, the hookers, or the interiors of some of the buildings that look so gorgeous and picturesque from the street, but which are probably rotting inside.”

They had come to the Rue de Rivoli.

“Look at this sumptuousness,” Iris said, gesturing toward the glittering shops on the arcaded avenue with the intaglioed stone that served as pavement. “This is what we see, or else the quaintness in the old, old sections. We sigh and are ecstatic … but it’s only the facade.”

“Well, you do seem to have your feet on the ground,” her aunt observed. “That’s very astute. You mean, of course, that you’re able to be realistic about it.”

“Sure.” She grinned. “Just the same, though, I’d like to live here. I imagine I could take the bad with the good.”

“So pretty and with a mind too,” her aunt said, returning the grin. “Will wonders never cease?”

“Oh, I’m a marvel. But why not, with such genes? An aunt like you?” She pointed. “Is that the cab stand down there?”

“Yes. Only there’s no cab. We’ll have to wait.”

It wasn’t for very long. A taxi, disgorging a natty passenger with a pencil-thin mustache and an attache case, accommodated them after only a few minutes had passed.

“The Champs de Mars, please,” Louisa said, and the driver shot forward before they even had a chance to settle in their seats.

“Will we see Napoleon’s tomb?” Iris asked, as they circled the Concorde. “That’s near where we’re going, isn’t it?”

The cab driver peered in his rear view mirror. “You want to see Les Invalides?” he demanded, craning his neck for abrief look at her.

“According to my map, it’s — ”

“I take you there,” he said heartily. “Everyone has to see Napoleon’s tomb.”

And from then on he didn’t stop talking, somewhat disjointedly, in atrociously-accented English, and in a loud, booming voice.

“American,” he stated, rather than asked.

“Yes.
Oui.”

“Late for Americans. And for Les Anglais. They come in summer,
les étrangères.”

“I suppose so,” Louisa agreed.

“What?” he shouted.

“I said they … I said yes, I suppose so.”

“I don’t mind. Good for business.”

He made a sharp left turn, at which Iris found herself practically in her aunt’s lap.

“How long you have been here?” the driver asked with ear-splitting cordiality.

“Three days,” Iris informed him.

“What?” he shouted again.

“Three days.
Trois jours.”

He laughed almost affectionately.
“Trois jours …
then you have not seen
anything!”

“Yes, we have,” Iris yelled accommodatingly. The poor man’s hearing was probably permanently impaired due to the horrendous din of Paris traffic.

He was good-naturedly scornful. “What have you seen in three days?”

“Uh … well, Notre Dame, and the Ile St. Louis, and St. Germain, and …”

He shrugged grudgingly.
“Eh bien …
it’s a start.”

They were crossing the river.

“Soon now, Les Invalides,” he instructed them in stentorian tones.

And then, slowing up, he drove them past the barracks-like expanse of what had once been the hospital that housed the sick and mutilated of Louis XIV’s men of arms and where blood-soaked bandages had piled up in the courtyards.

“Les Invalides,” their obliging driver cried out, and thrust an arm out of his window with a flourish.

“Ah yes,” Iris said, at the top of her lungs, while her aunt concealed a mirthful smile.

Then, “Le Tombeau de Napoleon,” he announced dramatically. He shook his head admiringly.
“Regardez Ça …”

He gestured toward the high, domed monument, with its soaring spire, as if he were presenting them with it as a personal gift.

He brought the vehicle to a grinding, shuddering halt. And before Iris could object that, at the moment, they had just wanted to have a look at Napoleon’s tomb on their way to the Champs de Mars, he shut off his meter and turned to them with a beaming face.

“Beautiful inside,” he informed them. “There lies Bonaparte, and his son, l’Aiglon.” He became quite emotional. “You know what Napoleon inscribed in his
testament?
No? He said, ‘I wish my body to be laid to rest on the banks of the Seine, among the French people I love so well … ‘“

He sighed. “And there he is to this day.” He glanced at his meter. “That will be twelve francs, Madame.”

“But we wanted to — ”

Louisa interrupted what Iris had started to say.

“Thank you,” she said, paying the driver.

“Thank
you,”
he replied, pocketing the fare and what had doubtless been a handsome tip. With an expansive smile that revealed two gleaming gold teeth, he ground gears with a resounding snarl and went roaring away into the distance.

“Well, that was a short ride,” Louisa said, tittering.

“I’m sorry,” Iris apologized. “I didn’t mean to take matters into my own hands.”

“It’s all right,” her aunt said, overcome with amusement. “He was just so
funny.
Most of them are inclined to be surly, but this one simply killed us with kindness.”

She wiped mirthful tears from her eyes. “To hear you shrieking at him like that … I thought I’d die.”

How nice, Iris thought. Her aunt was up again, where earlier she had been down … how nice to see her giggling like this.

“Now that we’re here shall we go inside?”

“Of course,” Louisa agreed. “We’re on our way to where we wanted to go anyway.”

The interior of the tomb, with its lofty, vaulted rotunda, its niches and crypts and imperial banners, was almost deserted. Only a handful of sightseers circled the sunken recess in which Bonaparte and his twenty-year-old son, the Duke of Reichstad, lay side by side.

Iris gazed down at the red granite sarcophagus wherein reposed the earthly remains of the Little Corporal, and recalled what he had said in one of his last hours.

“Our hour is marked, and no one can claim a moment of life beyond what fate has predestined.”

It could have been his epitaph, she thought, and shivered. It could be everyone’s epitaph.

Outside again, she was glad to see the sun, and the trees with their leaves whispering and leave the great, and the dead, to their eternal solitude.

“Somber and solemn,” Louisa commented. “Well, now we’ve done our duty by our friendly neighborhood cab driver, let’s cut over to the Avenue la Bourdonnais and we’ll be at the Champs de Mars.”

And so they were, only moments later, walking amidst its trim lawns and sculptured shrubbery, with the great iron pyramid of the Eiffel Tower piercing the sky. It was so familiar, and yet such a shock to be really seeing it for the first time. Every girder like the rib of a dinosaur, it was monstrous … and yet tremendously impressive.

Between the four gigantic feet at its base was a magnificent view of the Palais de Chaillot across the river, shimmering in the sunlight like a mirage.

“Well?” Louisa asked, looking up at the tower.

“It’s crazy. But it wouldn’t be Paris without it.”

“No it wouldn’t. Shall I buy you a balloon?” she asked, indicating some of the garish stands where souvenirs were for sale

“No, but I’d like an ice.”

“So would I,” Louisa said, and they went over to a stall that dealt in such things.

“Strawberry for me,” Iris decided, and her aunt chose lemon. They sat down on a bench and, with relish, ate their glacés.

There were litter baskets at regular intervals, but it was clear that here, as in New York, they were largely ignored. The pavement was strewn with discarded rubbish.

“Too bad,” Louisa commented. “Really, people can be so unthinking.” She kicked a soft drink can out of her path. “All right, let’s cross over to the Trocadero side.”

When they had done so the vista, with the Eiffel Tower on one side of the Seine and the Palais de Chaillot, on its lofty rise, opposite it on the other side, was a study in contrast.

Here, there was a stately formality, with the glimmer of bright blue water in a rectangular sunken pool, graveled walks bordered with flowery lanes of plantings, with the two widely-spaced wings of the Palais, pristinely white, dominating the overall picture.

When they had walked the long distance up to the 20th century Palais — where more recent history had been made — the view was breathtaking.

“Let’s just sit for a while,” Louisa suggested.

“Let’s sit for a year or so,” Iris murmured.

“You’ll want to go in the Musée de l’Homme,” her aunt told her. “I find it fascinating and so will you.”

“What else is in the Palais?”

“Oh, all sorts of things. Fashion shows are sometimes held here. But there’s a museum of arts and traditions you’d probably be interested in. We can do both places.”

They only “did” the Musée de l’Homme, which was, as Louisa had declared, fascinating indeed. But after that Iris was not to be pried from the great stone terrace between the two wings of the Palais, and they spent another half hour there.

It was the view, of course. It was the height at which the Palais de Chaillot stood, opening up a sweeping panorama of the city.

Finally Louisa insisted that they really must tear themselves away. “It’s after one, and there are other things on our schedule.”

“Yes, you’re right.”

“And now the Place de Vosges?”

“All right with you?”

“Fine with me. You want to see Victor Hugo’s house? You shall see his house. Anyway, it’s a wondrous place, a great, noble square of quintessential beauty. I seem to recall that you also expressed a desire to go to the Place de la Bastille.”

“If we can work it in.”

“We can, and will. Somewhere in between we’ll find a cafe and have a bit of lunch. Nothing much … a
croque monsieur
and a cold drink. Let’s get ourselves up to the avenue and find a cab. What a lovely day! I assure you, it can rain in this city for days on end, and generally when you’ve planned only a few days to stay.”

“Fortune favors us,” Iris said gaily, and so it seemed to, for they found a cruising taxi the moment they got to the Avenue President Wilson. Its driver was one of the surly ones, but who cared?

At least I don’t have to scream myself hoarse, Iris thought, and reminded herself that tomorrow she would have to buy some more rolls of film for her camera.

At the end of another long, wearying but rewarding day, and at just short of seven o’clock, Louisa said, “Let’s not bother going back to the hotel. We’ll find a place for dinner somewhere around here.”

“Suits me,” Iris said gratefully. “I don’t particularly cotton to the idea of changing clothes and fixing my dumb face. Frankly, I’m pooped.”

“Is it catching up with you?”

“You mean the accumulation of three days of rubbernecking and walking blisters on my feet? Not in any way I mind. Heaven forbid. It’s mostly the way your mind gets filled with impressions until you feel you’ll explode.”

“Iris, it seems to me I recall a restaurant in this vicinity. We could have dinner there if I can find it.”

They were at the Place de la Bastille where, of course, there had been no Bastille for almost two hundred years and where now there stood, in a drab and undramatic spot, an unremarkable column to mark the infamous prison a maddened populace had once stormed.

“I think,” Louisa said, “that the restaurant I have in mind was on the Rue St. Antoine.”

“Let’s have a look around,” Iris suggested, and after walking some distance her aunt said yes, this looked familiar.

“That little church up ahead … I’m sure this is about where it was. Of course it may no longer be there … though in Paris everything generally is always there, year after year.”

A minute later she cried, “That’s it!”

A sign on a royal-blue canopy read L’AUBERGE BRETAGNE.

“That means fish,” Louisa said, delighted. “Yes, I remember we had a very good meal here.”

“It looks neighborhood French.”

“It should be. This isn’t tourist territory.”

Inside, their greeting was cordial: A rotund and genial
patron
led them to a small banquette by a window where, in the gathering dusk, they were able to look out at the fine old trees that bordered the street.

There were fresh flowers on their table, exposed beams overhead, and a fieldstone hearth at the farther end of the room. A convivial waiter brought over two gloriously chilled martinis, slipped their menus unobtrusively to one side of the table, and left them to enjoy their drinks, over which they discussed the events of the day.

“What did you like best?” Louisa asked, and when Iris said the Place de Vosges, she nodded. “It’s an architectural gem,” she agreed. “You saw Victor Hugo’s house and that of Madame de Sévigné. The whole area is steeped in history, some of it very bloody — the head of Madame de Lamballe on a pike, for example, and the tumbrils rumbling over the cobblestones to the Temple.”

She gave her niece a slightly defensive glance. “When I married Henry,” she said, “I was a little ignoramus. I knew so
little.
Henry, though, was a scholar. He was the only teacher I ever learned anything from. He made me a total person.”