The while he penned his versified
inquiry which after all these centuries is not yet satisfactorily
answered, touching on the approximate whereabouts of the snows
that fell yesteryear and the roses that bloomed yesterweek.
Midway of a winding alley you come to an ancient wall and an ancient
gate crowned with the half-effaced quarterings of an ancient house,
and you halt, almost expecting that the rusted hinges will creak
a warning and the wooden halves begrudgingly divide, and that from
under the slewed arch will issue a most gallant swashbuckler with
his buckles all buckled and his swash swashing; hence the name.
At this juncture you feel a touch on your shoulder. You spin on
your heel, feeling at your hip for an imaginary sword. But 'tis
not Master Francois Villon, in tattered doublet, with a sonnet.
Nor yet is it a jaunty blade, in silken cloak, with a challenge.
It is your friend of the obscene photograph collection. He has
followed you all the way from 1914 clear back into the Middle Ages,
biding his time and hoping you will change your mind about investing
in his nasty wares.
With your wife or your sister you visit the Louvre. You look on
the Winged Victory and admire her classic but somewhat bulky
proportions, meantime saying to yourself that it certainly must
have been a mighty hard battle the lady won, because she lost her
head and both arms in doing it. You tire of interminable portraits
of the Grand Monarch, showing him grouped with his wife, the
Old-fashioned Square Upright; and his son, the Baby Grand; and his
prime minister, the Lyre; and his brother, the Yellow Clarinet,
and the rest of the orchestra. You examine the space on the wall
where Mona Lisa is or is not smiling her inscrutable smile, depending
on whether the open season for Mona Lisas has come or has passed.
Wandering your weary way past acres of the works of Rubens, and
miles of Titians, and townships of Corots, and ranges of Michelangelos,
and quarter sections of Raphaels, and government reserves of Leonardo
da Vincis, you stray off finally into a side passage to see something
else, leaving your wife or your sister behind in one of the main
galleries. You are gone only a minute or two, but returning you
find her furiously, helplessly angry and embarrassed; and on inquiry
you learn she has been enduring the ordeal of being ogled by a
small, wormy-looking creature who has gone without shaving for two
or three years in a desperate endeavor to resemble a real man.
Some day somebody will take a squirt-gun and a pint of insect
powder and destroy these little, hairy caterpillars who infest all
parts of Paris and make it impossible for a respectable woman to
venture on the streets unaccompanied.
