DOI article:
Dowie, Ménie Muriel: Wladlislaw's Advent
DOI Page / Citation link:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.21805#0102
Wladislaw’s Advent
98
the oieander tubs that surrounded with much decorative ability
the doors of the Cafe Amadou, he agreed to come to my rooms
and have a cup of coffee, in order to narrate the exciting and
mysterious incident of the day before.
Sitting on each side of my stove, which was red-hot and threat-
ening to crack at any minute, Wladislaw, with cautions to me
“not to judge too soon : I should see if it had not been stränge,
this that had happened to him,” told me this ridiculous Story.
He had started up the Bois ; he had found the Parc Monceau ;
he had come down a big Street to the Madeleine ; he had looked
in ; it had reminded him of a concert-hall, and was not at all
impressive {gar nicht imponirend) ; he had walked along the left-
hand side of the Boulevard des Capucines. It was as poor a
Street as he could have imagined in a big town, the shops
wretched ; he supposed in London our shops were better ? I
assured him that in London the shops were much better ; that it
was a Standing mystery to me, as to all the other English women
I knew, where the pretty things for which Paris is celebrated
were to be bought. And I implored him to teil me his adven-
ture.
Ah ! Well—now the point was reached ; now I was to hear !
One minute !—Well, he had come opposite the Cafe de la Paix,
and he had paused an instant to contemplate the unrelieved
commonplace ugliness of the average Frenchman as there to be
observed—and then he had pursued his way.
It was getting dusk in the winter afternoon, and when he came
through the Place de l’Opera all the lights were lit, and he was
delighted, as who must not be, by the effect of that particular bit
of Paris ? He was just Crossing the Place to go down the left-
hand side of the Avenue, when it occurred to him that he was
being followed.
It
98
the oieander tubs that surrounded with much decorative ability
the doors of the Cafe Amadou, he agreed to come to my rooms
and have a cup of coffee, in order to narrate the exciting and
mysterious incident of the day before.
Sitting on each side of my stove, which was red-hot and threat-
ening to crack at any minute, Wladislaw, with cautions to me
“not to judge too soon : I should see if it had not been stränge,
this that had happened to him,” told me this ridiculous Story.
He had started up the Bois ; he had found the Parc Monceau ;
he had come down a big Street to the Madeleine ; he had looked
in ; it had reminded him of a concert-hall, and was not at all
impressive {gar nicht imponirend) ; he had walked along the left-
hand side of the Boulevard des Capucines. It was as poor a
Street as he could have imagined in a big town, the shops
wretched ; he supposed in London our shops were better ? I
assured him that in London the shops were much better ; that it
was a Standing mystery to me, as to all the other English women
I knew, where the pretty things for which Paris is celebrated
were to be bought. And I implored him to teil me his adven-
ture.
Ah ! Well—now the point was reached ; now I was to hear !
One minute !—Well, he had come opposite the Cafe de la Paix,
and he had paused an instant to contemplate the unrelieved
commonplace ugliness of the average Frenchman as there to be
observed—and then he had pursued his way.
It was getting dusk in the winter afternoon, and when he came
through the Place de l’Opera all the lights were lit, and he was
delighted, as who must not be, by the effect of that particular bit
of Paris ? He was just Crossing the Place to go down the left-
hand side of the Avenue, when it occurred to him that he was
being followed.
It