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By Root 1350 0

house to watch the carriages round the pleasant curve of the main carriageway. They liked this charming section of new Paris, this lovely and clean patch of nature with its velvety lawns punctuated by beds of flowers and carefully selected shrubs and lined with splendid white roses. Carriages here were as thick as on the boulevards, and strolling ladies dragged their skirts along the ground as softly as if they had never left their carpeted salons. Peering through the foliage, the lovers criticized the women’s outfits, pointed out their carriages, and with genuine delight savored the soft colors of this huge garden. A section of gilded fence shone between two trees, a line of ducks glided along the lake, and the little Renaissance bridge with its fresh coat of white paint stood out amid the greenery, while mothers seated in yellow chairs on either side of the main path became so absorbed in conversation that they forgot about the little boys and girls precociously making eyes at one another.

The lovers were in love with the new Paris. They often dashed about the city by carriage, detouring down certain boulevards for which they felt a special affection. They took delight in the imposing houses with big carved doors and innumerable balconies emblazoned with names, signs, and company insignia in big gold letters. As their coupé sped along, they fondly gazed out upon the gray strips of sidewalk, broad and interminable, with their benches, colorful columns, and skinny trees. The bright gap stretching all the way to the horizon, narrowing as it went and opening out onto a patch of empty blue sky; the uninterrupted double row of big stores with clerks smiling at their customers; the bustling streams of pedestrians—all this filled them little by little with a sense of absolute and total satisfaction, a feeling of perfection as they viewed the life of the street. They even loved the jets from the watering nozzles that spewed white mist ahead of their horses and then fell in a fine shower beneath the wheels of their coupé, darkening the ground and raising a thin cloud of dust. They were constantly on the move, and to them it seemed as though their carriage rolled on carpet along a straight and endless roadway that had been built expressly to allow them to avoid the dark side streets. Each boulevard became but another corridor of their house. The sun bathed the façades of the new buildings in joy, illuminating windows, warming the awnings of shops and cafés, and heating the asphalt beneath the feet of pedestrians rushing from one place to the next. And when they returned home, their heads spinning from the noisy spectacle of those interminable bazaars, they took delight in the Parc Monceau, which was like a floral strip essential for defining the edge of the new Paris and displaying its riches in those first warm days of spring.

When fashion absolutely forced them to leave Paris, they went to the seaside, but they went reluctantly, always longing for the sidewalks of the boulevards as they lay on the beaches of the Atlantic. At the shore, even love grew bored. For their love was a hothouse flower that needed the big gray-and-pink bed, the naked flesh of the dressing room, and the golden dawn of the small salon. When they sat alone in the evening facing the sea, they found that they had nothing to say to each other. Renée tried to sing songs she’d learned at the Théâtre des Variétés while accompanying herself on an old piano that stood on its last legs in a corner of her hotel room, but the instrument, damp from the sea breeze, had the melancholy voice of the tides. La Belle Hélène sounded lugubrious and fantastic when played on it. To console herself, the young woman stunned the beach with her prodigious costumes. Her whole gang was there, yawning, waiting for winter, and desperately searching for bathing suits that wouldn’t make them look too ugly. Renée had no luck at all persuading Maxime to go swimming. He was deathly afraid of the water, turned pale when the waves lapped at his boots, and wouldn’t go near the edge of a cliff