to be at the entrance of a new life, a better sort of paradise, during
that drive across the night city. In London one is always a passenger,
in Paris one has reached a goal. The crowds on the pavements, under the
plane-trees, in the black shadows, in the white glare of the open
spaces, are at leisure--they go nowhere, seek nothing beyond.

We crossed the river, the unwinking towers of Notre Dame towering
pallidly against the dark sky behind us; rattled into the new light of
the resuming boulevard; turned up a dark street, and came to a halt
before a half-familiar shut door. You know how one wakes the sleepy
concierge, how one takes one's candle, climbs up hundreds and hundreds
of smooth stairs, following the slipshod footfalls of a half-awakened
guide upward through Rembrandt's own shadows, and how one's final sleep
is sweetened by the little inconveniences of a strange bare room and of
a strange hard bed.




CHAPTER TEN


Before noon of the next day I was ascending the stairs of the new house
in which the Duc had his hermitage. There was an air of secrecy in the
broad publicity of the carpeted stairs that led to his flat; a hush in
the atmosphere; in the street itself, a glorified _cul de sac_ that ran
into the bustling life of the Italiens. It had the sudden sluggishness
of a back-water. One seemed to have grown suddenly deaf in the midst of
the rattle.