xi-cab at bay some yards further up the
street. But I was not hurt and I waved them all away with a
magnanimous gesture.... It is owing to this habit of mine that I often
make interesting _rencontres_ in the middle of streets. It accounts,
in fact, for my running, quite absent-mindedly, plump into Dickinson
Sitgreaves, who is more American than his name sounds, one August day
in Paris.

It was one of those charming days which make August perhaps the most
delightful month to spend in Paris, although the facts are not known
to tourists. Many a sly French pair, however, bored with Trouville, or
the season at Aix, take advantage of the allurements of a Paris August
to return surreptitiously to the boulevards. On this particular day
almost all the seduction of an October day was in the air, a splendid
dull warm-cool crispness, which filtered down through the faded
chestnut leaves from the sunlight, and left pale splotches of purple
and orange on the _trottoirs_ ... a really marvellous day, which I was
spending in that most excellent occupation in Paris of gazing into
shops and, passing cafes, staring into the faces of those who sat on
the _terrasses_.... But this is an occupation for one alone; so, when
I met Sitgreaves, we joined a _terrasse_ ourselves. We were near the
Napolitain and there he and I sat down and began to talk as only we
two can talk together after long separation. He explained in the
beginning how I had interrupted him.... There was a _fille_, some
little Polish beauty who had captivated his senses a day or so before,
brought to him quite by accident in an hotel where the _patron_
furnished his clients with such pleasure as the town and his address
book afforded.... I knew the _patron_ myself, a fluent, amusing sort
of person, who had been a _cuirassier_ and who resembled Mayol ... a
_cafe-concert_ proprietor of an hotel.... It was his boast that he had
never disappointed a client and it is certain that he would promise
anything. Some have said that his stock in trade was one pretty girl,
who assumed costumes, ages, hair, and accents, to please whatever
demand was made upon her, but this I do not believe. There must have
been at least two of them. The Grand Duchess Anastasia, it was
rumoured, had dined with Marcel at one time, in his little hotel, and
certainly one king had been seen to go there, and one member of the
English royal family, but Marcel remained simple and obliging.

"When will you look up t