ce, with just room for one man, who
griddles _gaufrettes_, and three or four tiny tables with chairs. At
one of these we sat that night (just as I had sat so many times
before) and sipped our cognac.

It is difficult in an adventure to remember just when the departure
comes, when one leaves the past and strides into the future, but I
think that moment befell me in this cafe ... for it was the first time
I had ever seen a cat there. He was a lazy, splendid animal. In New
York he would have been an oddity, but in Paris there are many such
beasts. Tawny he was and soft to the touch and of a hugeness. He was
lying on the bar and as I stroked his coat he purred melifluously....
I stroked his warm fur and thought how I belonged to the mystic band
(Gautier, Baudelaire, Merimee, all knew the secrets) of those who are
acquainted with cats; it is a feeling of pride we have that
differentiates us from the dog lovers, the pride of the appreciation
of indifference or of conscious preference. And it was, I think, as I
was stroking the cat that my past was smote away from me and I was
projected into the adventure for, as I lifted the animal into my arms,
the better to feel its warmth and softness, it sprang with strength
and unsheathed claws out of my embrace, and soon was back on the bar
again, "just as if nothing had happened." There was blood on my face.
Madame, behind the bar, was apologetic but not chastening. "_Il avait
peur_," she said. "_Il n'est pas mechant._" The wound was not deep,
and as I bent to pet the cat again he again purred. I had interfered
with his habits and, as I discovered later, he had interfered with
mine.

We decided to walk down the hill instead of riding down in the
_finiculaire_, down the stairs which form another of the pictures in
_Louise_, with the abutting houses, into the rooms of which one looks,
conscious of prying. And you see the old in these interiors, making
shoes, or preparing dinner, or the middle-aged going to bed, but the
young one never sees in the houses in the summer.... It was early and
we decided to dance; I thought of the Moulin de la Galette, which I
had visited twice before. The Moulin de la Galette waves its gaunt
arms in the air half way up the _butte_ of Montmartre; it serves its
purpose as a dance hall of the quarter. One meets the pretty little
_Montmartroises_ there and the young artists; the entrance fee is not
exorbitant and one may drink a bock. And when I have been there