The Lost Ambassador | Page 3

told Louis. "It isn't a very pleasant
mission, and the memory of it is always with me."
"A search!" Louis repeated thoughtfully. "Paris is a large place,
monsieur."
"On the contrary," I answered, "it is small enough if a man will but play
the game. A man, who knows his Paris, must be in one of half-a-dozen
places some time during the day."
"It is true," Louis admitted. "Yet monsieur has not been successful."
"It has been because some one has warned the man of whom I am in
search!" I declared.

"There are worse places," he remarked, "in which one might be forced
to spend one's time."
"In theory, excellent, Louis," I said. "In practice, I am afraid I cannot
agree with you. So far," I declared, gloomily, "my pilgrimage has been
an utter failure. I cannot meet, I cannot hear of, the man who I know
was flaunting it before the world three weeks ago."
Louis shrugged his shoulders.
"Monsieur can do no more than seek," he remarked. "For the rest, one
may leave many burdens behind in the train at the Gare du Nord."
I shook my head.
"One cannot acquire gayety by only watching other people who are
gay," I declared. "Paris is not for those who have anxieties, Louis. If
ever I were suffering from melancholia, for instance, I should choose
some other place for a visit."
Louis laughed softly.
"Ah! Monsieur," he answered, "you could not choose better. There is
no place so gay as this, no place so full of distractions."
I shrugged my shoulders.
"It is your native city," I reminded him.
"That goes for nothing," Louis answered. "Where I live, there always I
make my native city. I have lived in Vienna and Berlin, Budapest and
Palermo, Florence and London. It is not an affair of the place. Yet of all
these, if one seeks it, there is most distraction to be found here.
Monsieur does not agree with me," he added, glancing into my face.
"There is one thing more which I would tell him. Perhaps it is the
explanation. Paris, the very home of happiness and gayety, is also the
loneliest and the saddest city in the world for those who go alone."
"There is truth in what you say, Louis," I admitted.

"The very fact," he continued slowly, "that all the world amuses itself,
all the world is gay here, makes the solitude of the unfortunate who has
no companion a thing more triste, more keenly to be felt. Monsieur is
alone?"
"I am alone," I admitted, "except for the companions of chance whom
one meets everywhere."
We had been walking for some time slowly side by side, and we came
now to a standstill. Louis held up his hand and called a taximeter.
"Monsieur goes somewhere to sup, without a doubt," he remarked.
I remained upon the pavement.
"Really, I don't know," I answered undecidedly. "There is a great deal
of truth in what you have been saying. A man alone here, especially at
night, seems to be looked upon as a sort of pariah. Women laugh at him,
men pity him. It is only the Englishman, they think, who would do so
foolish a thing."
Louis hesitated. There was a peculiar smile at the corners of his lips
which I did not quite understand.
"If monsieur would honor me," he said apologetically, "I am going
to-night to visit one or perhaps two of the smallest restaurants up in the
Montmartre. They are by way of being fashionable now, and they tell
me that there is an Homard Speciale with a new sauce which must be
tasted at the Abbaye."
All the apology in Louis' tone was wasted. It troubled me not in the
least that my companion should be a maitre d'hotel. I did not hesitate
for a second.
"I'll come with pleasure, Louis," I said, "on condition that I am host. It
is very good of you to take pity upon me. We will take this taximeter,
shall we?"

Louis bowed. Once more I fancied that there was something in his face
which I did not altogether understand.
"It is an honor, monsieur," he said. "We will start, then, with the
Abbaye."
CHAPTER II
A CAFE IN PARIS
The Paris taximeters are good, and our progress was rapid. We passed
through the crowded streets, where the women spread themselves out
like beautiful butterflies, where the electric lights were deadened by the
brilliance of the moon, where men, bent double over the handles of
their bicycles, shot hither and thither with great paper lanterns alight in
front of them. We passed into the quieter streets, though even here the
wayfarers whom we met were obviously bent on pleasure, up the hill,
till at last we pulled up at one