isitor
was not made personally and charmingly welcome, and I have never seen
such typically French restaurants as the Lafayette and the Brevoort.
And the Villagers feel it too. From the shabbiest socialist to the
most flagrantly painted little artist's model, they drift in
thankfully to that atmosphere of gaiety and sympathy and thoughtful
kindliness which is, after all, just--the air of France.

Next let us take a restaurant of quite another type, not far from the
Brevoort--all the Village eating places are close together--walk
across the square, a block further, and you are there.

It is not many years since Bohemia ate chiefly in the side streets,
at restaurants such as Enrico's, Baroni's--there are a dozen such
places. They still exist, but the Village is dropping away from them.
They are very good and very cheap, and the tourist--that is, the
uptowner--thinks he is seeing Bohemia when he eats in them, but not
many of them remain at all characteristic. Bertolotti's is something
of an exception. It is a restaurant of the old style, a survival of
the days when all Bohemian restaurants were Italian. La Signora says
they have been there, just there on Third Street, for twenty years. If
you are a newcomer you will probably eat in the upstairs room, in cool
and rather remote grandeur, and the pretty daughter with the wondrous
black eyes will serve you the more elaborate of the most
extraordinarily named dishes on the menu. But if, by long experience,
you know what is pleasant and comfortable you will take a place in the
basement cafe. At the clean, bare table, in the shadow of the big,
bright, many-bottled bar, you will eat your _Risotta alla Milanese_,
your _coteletti di Vitelle_, your _asparagi_--it's probably the only
place in the city where they serve asparagus with grated
cheese--finally your _zambaione_,--a heavenly sort of hot "flip," very
foamy and seductive and strongly flavoured with Marsarla wine.

If you stand well with the house you may have the honour to be
escorted by the Signora herself--handsome, dignified, genial, with a
veritable coronal of splendid grey hair--to watch the eternal bowling
in the alley back of the restaurant. I have watched them fascinated
for long periods and I have never learned what it is they are trying
to do with those big "bowling balls." They have no ninepins, so they
are not trying to make a ten-strike. Apparently, it is a game however,
for now and then a shout of triumph proc