The Guest of Quesnay

The Guest of Quesnay

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Tarkington #12 in our series by Booth Tarkington
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Title: The Guest of Quesnay
Author: Booth Tarkington
Release Date: May, 2004 [EBook #5756] [Yes, we are more than one
year ahead of schedule] [This file was first posted on August 28, 2002]
Edition: 10

Language: English
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THE GUEST OF QUESNAY
BY BOOTH TARKINGTON
ILLUSTRATED
NEW YORK 1915
TO OVID BUTLER JAMESON

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
Several pairs of brighter eyes followed my companion ...... Frontispiece
"I haven't had my life. It's gone!"
"You and Miss Ward are old and dear friends, aren't you?"
"Embrasse moi, Larrabi! Embrasse moi!" she cried

CHAPTER I
There are old Parisians who will tell you pompously that the
boulevards, like the political cafes, have ceased to exist, but this means
only that the boulevards no longer gossip of Louis Napoleon, the
Return of the Bourbons, or of General Boulanger, for these highways
are always too busily stirring with present movements not to be
forgetful of their yesterdays. In the shade of the buildings and awnings,
the loungers, the lookers-on in Paris, the audience of the boulevard, sit
at little tables, sipping coffee from long glasses, drinking absinthe or
bright- coloured sirops, and gazing over the heads of throngs afoot at
others borne along through the sunshine of the street in carriages, in
cabs, in glittering automobiles, or high on the tops of omnibuses.

From all the continents the multitudes come to join in that procession:
Americans, tagged with race-cards and intending hilarious disturbances;
puzzled Americans, worn with guide-book plodding; Chinese princes
in silk; queer Antillean dandies of swarthy origin and fortune; ruddy
English, thinking of nothing; pallid English, with upper teeth bared and
eyes hungrily searching for sign-boards of tea-rooms;
over-Europeanised Japanese, unpleasantly immaculate; burnoosed
sheiks from the desert, and red-fezzed Semitic peddlers; Italian nobles
in English tweeds; Soudanese negroes swaggering in frock coats; slim
Spaniards, squat Turks, travellers, idlers, exiles, fugitives,
sportsmen--all the tribes and kinds of men are tributary here to the
Parisian stream which, on a fair day in spring, already overflows the
banks with its own much-mingled waters. Soberly clad burgesses,
bearded, amiable, and in no fatal hurry; well-kept men of the world
swirling by in miraculous limousines; legless cripples flopping on
hands and leather pads; thin-whiskered students in velveteen;
walrus-moustached veterans in broadcloth; keen-faced old prelates;
shabby young priests; cavalrymen in casque and cuirass; workingmen
turned horse and harnessed to carts; sidewalk jesters, itinerant vendors
of questionable wares; shady loafers dressed to resemble
gold-showering America; motor-cyclists in leather; hairy musicians,
blue gendarmes, baggy red zouaves; purple-faced, glazed- hatted,
scarlet-waistcoated, cigarette-smoking cabmen, calling one another
"onions," "camels," and names even more terrible. Women prevalent
over all the concourse; fair women, dark women, pretty women, gilded
women, haughty women, indifferent women, friendly women, merry
women. Fine women in fine clothes; rich women in fine clothes; poor
women in fine clothes. Worldly old women, reclining befurred in
electric landaulettes; wordy old women hoydenishly trundling carts full
of flowers. Wonderful automobile women quick-glimpsed, in multiple
veils of white and brown and sea-green. Women in rags and tags, and
women draped, coifed, and befrilled in the delirium of maddened
poet-milliners and the hasheesh dreams of ladies' tailors.
About the procession, as it moves interminably along the boulevard, a
blue haze of fine dust and burnt gasoline rises into the sunshine like the
haze over the passages to an amphitheatre toward which a crowd is

trampling; and through this the multitudes seem to go as actors passing
to their cues. Your place at one of the little tables upon the sidewalk is
that of a wayside spectator: and as the performers go by, in some
measure acting or looking their