The Green Hat by Arlen Michael

Author:Arlen, Michael [Arlen, Michael]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780598782816
Google: ZEdaAAAAMAAJ
Amazon: B094DJTB4Q
Goodreads: 58030228
Publisher: Lume Books
Published: 1924-01-01T07:00:00+00:00

Chapter Seven

For Venice!

1

Fat white clouds hurried over the pale blue roof of the rue de la Paix. Spring, the first day before the first day of spring, the day that is not spring but is as a voice of spring crying in the wilderness of the chilly heavens: ‘Here is spring, and lo! these are the clouds of winter fleeing before her, white as polar bears, and as stupid. Enjoy, enjoy le printemps!’ Anxious the fat white clouds seemed, most anxious, hurrying from the vanities of the rue de la Paix towards the Cathedral of Our Lady, that they might pray, the poor clouds who know not that the pagan gods are dead, the poor clouds, who love the winter, against the return of Persephone from the arms of Plutus. The stormy brittle sunlight, eager to play with the pearls and diamonds of Van Cleef, Lacloche and Cartier, aye, and of Tecla also, chided away the fat white clouds, and now the sun would play with one window of the rue de la Paix, now with another, mortifying one, teasing another, but all in a very handsome way.

Early the next morning it was when I found myself looking upon these mighty diversions, but I had so much rather been asleep. My bedroom looked down on these things, but unfortunately not from a great height, for they are not tall, the hotels of Paris; and men are sent round the streets of Paris first thing in the morning, to the end that people may not fail to be aware of the beauty of shuttered shops, some of these men being directed to push along enormous tin barrels with which to make a carmagnole of dust, whilst others are placed on ancient taxicabs with especially adjusted gears and magnified horn-power. There is no peace in the world, that is what it is. There is no peace in Paris.

I lay in bed, staring through the lace curtains. What had happened, what were the alarums and excursions of that grey day yesterday, which had leapt at me from the darkness as I made to return to England after four months of pleasant wandering? Iris was ill unto death, Napier was enchanted…

Men, some in shirt-sleeves, were taking down the heavy, grey, burglar-proof shutters of the shops opposite. Set in the small windows above the shops, the modistes’ assistants seemed to be talking and talking. Some had hats in their nimble hands, some other things. It is pleasant, maybe it is the only pleasant pastime that does not ever pall, to see and not be seen. And now the shop windows began one and all to glitter in the stormy brittle sunlight which transmuted the pearls and diamonds on yellow velvet into celestial jewels fit to adorn the crown of the word printemps, than which there is not a more beautiful word in all the languages of the world. In the great window of Edouard Apel et Cie., whence in the long ago had come to

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