One day a person who used to be our friend told us to go to the P. O. P. which translates itself into Publique Offices Parisienne and which means almost nothing at all. The P. O. P. is a renting office. There we went and with beautiful American simplicity asked that we might see their offerings. Cold suspicion was our welcome, but we were determined and repeated that we desired at almost any cost to find an apartment. The phrase "at any cost" when translated into French will always awaken an immediate response. We were then told that there is a nominal charge of twenty-five francs, on payment of which, with the receipt in hand, it is possible to look over the lists of the Publique Offices Parisienne.

Our reward was a list of about twenty-five apartments.

Careening through Paris we went and the very soul of me exulted. Long had I read of the emotions of great game-hunters as they approach their prey, and at last was I to experience the sensation. We were on the trail.

"You desire to see the apartment? But yes, monsieur, please come you in."

The pungent odor of many boiled cabbages assailed me. I remembered that game-hunters have often tried, and in vain, to describe the smell of a leopard even as I now fail in conveying the odor of French cabbage. There is a certain type of Frenchman you see riding a bicycle, and ever he wears patent-leather shoes, purple socks, striped trousers, a black coat and more often than not a red tiea strange morning ensemble. He is the Frenchman that likes cabbage.

Twice a day huge quantities of it pass his rolling r's. It is not strange then, that with so many cabbages about, the air of his houses should be filled with their odor.

"Voici la salle à manger!" We saw it and could its dull dreariness be described I should have painted for you the soul of a cabbage.

I wanted to flee, but I sought a gentle excuse.

"Have you a bathroom here, madame?" I was sure that she did not, though one can never be sure of anything in France. She had a bathroom. Had there been any such expression in her language she would have said, "I have a bathroom of sorts."

We passed through the kitchen and came into a closet, a rather large closet to be sure, but nevertheless of the genus closet. Here then was the bathroom. As our eyes became accustomed to the darkness we could make out the gleam from the polished surface of a copper pot.

"Is that the bathtub?" I asked.

"But yes! That is a 'veritable' bathtub." The French always employ the word "veritable" when they are not quite sure of themselves. "I made it myself," she concluded.

"Made the tub?" I queried.

"Ah no, my brother who is a scientist made the 'actual' tub!" One quickly learns in France that an 'actual' is different from a 'veritable' thing. Oh, but veritably different! It is subtle, too subtle for me to explain. "My brother made the 'actual' tub and I," there was a glint of pride in her eyes, "I made the 'physical arrangements' of it.'

My interest quickly passed from the search for an apartment to the

curious contrivance before me, the like of which I had never before seen. True it was a tub, but it seemed to be many yards from any possible water. The "actuality" of the tub proved the brother's part, but I could not discover the physical arrangements.

"See you this hose running here?" she explained. With equal difficulty I followed her device and her French. "It carries the gas through this hole in the wall, which I have made, from my stove to the underneath part of the 'veritable' tub and there you have in the twinkle of an eye, about half an hour, a hot bath."

"But, madame, where is the the water?" I was as excited as if the gas were already lit, for remembering a course in physics I knew that it is dangerous to light a fire under an empty vessel-dangerous to the vessel.

"The water? But here it is." She fled kitchenward and returned with the article in question. But I am not being exact, for she did not return with the water, but with about thirty-five feet of rubber hose which was attached to the faucet of the kitchen sink. Yes, there were all the physical arrangements. My curiosity, however, was only half satisfied, since a full tub is only half of the total action. For there must always be some way to remove the water from the tub, immediately or in the vague future. How? That was the question.

"One employs the natural laws, monsieur, and allows the water to take itself out by a siphon. Of course since half the tub is below the lowest level of the sink it becomes necessary to take the remaining water out by hand."

My curiosity was satisfied and my head was swimming.

I remarked that a tub was better than no tub at all. St. Thomas Aquinas might have answered me that to have a thing was not always better than not to have it, but madame not being of the cult of renunciation, answered:

"But 'veritably' a tub is better than no tub at all."

I have observed before that when the French are not quite sure of themselves they invariably employ the word "veritable."

The bedroom, the salon and the petit salon represented what museum curators dream of but seem never able to achieve; they were perfect— the perfect collection of examples of all that was bad in the Victorian era.

Then there was wall-paper-I have often wondered why some essayist has not chosen the French variety for a subject. Think of what Ruskin could have done with it. Certainly it warrants inclusion among the "Seven Lamps of Architecture" but he has omitted it. There should be a museum for wallpaper in Paris. There is a museum for nearly everything else.

Multiply the picture that I have tried to give you by twenty-five and you will come close to an understanding of what we saw during our three days' hunt for a Paris apartment. For three days we lived in a taxicab, and with almost childlike optimism we hoped that the next address would bring us what we wanted; but like the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow it never did. Disappointment is one of life's favorite lessons. It is in such times as these that one achieves a philosophy;

I won to a more kindly outlook on life.

There are men and women who sleep every night on the sidewalks of Paris and down along the ledge that borders the river. They are not the poor unfortunates whom the world has discarded; they are the wise ones who have looked for apartments in Paris and have preferred the sidewalks. At last I had their secret.

23

In the days that followed we saw the sights of Paris. I must admit that I had my eye open for some likely spot, some corner of a building, some protected sidewalk where we might set up housekeeping.

Then one day we wandered back into the Place des Vosges. It is, I have come to think, one of the most charming spots in all the city. I spied my friend of a month before, the concierge who anticipated her tenant's deaths. She was gently and carefully removing the not too tattered remains of a crape-clustered wreath that had until this moment adorned the door of Number 1 Place des Vosges. I felt like an ambulance chaser or a grave robber; but mustering my courage I asked in an off-hand though quavering voice:

"Madame, is there now perchance an apartment free in this charming Square?" I am afraid that I emphasized the words "now perchance," but there was little hope in my voice for I said my speech as a court-clerk reads an oath.

Over the crape and the calla lillies she answered, "Assuredly, monsieur, there is an apartment. There is just to-day an apartment, the charming apartment of which I told you. It is the apartment of Madame Leconte!"

I wished that she had not said all of that. I blinded myself to the very patent fact of the crape and the calla lillies, and bowing low begged that I be permitted to see the charming apartment. I felt like a ghoul and I prayed that Madame Leconte had been removed. Just at this moment a woman dashed up and in violent French exclaimed, "You have an apartment, Madame la Concierge! I will take it immediately."

Madame interrupted me as I was about to defend my rights of priority in this my new found and yet unseen possession, "Monsieur is first; later perhaps it will be free." Madame's tone admitted of no argument, but the unhappy thought occurred to me that the "later perhaps it will be free" might refer to my own funeral.

When I examined the apartment in the Place des Vosges I exclaimed, "But, madame, this is a palace actuellement!”

"But yes, monsieur, it is a palace. These are the very apartments of the good king Henry the Fourth. See, is not a statue of his head and a crown affixed under your very windows. His mistress lived next door at Number 2 Place des Vosges."

"And his queen?" I queried.

"His queen? Ah yes, but she lived across the Square in the house that you see there." Naïveté is not a modern French trait.

With a smile and in a burst of originality, I observed, "Madame, times have changed since the days of the fourth Henry."

"A little but not much. Butter is more expensive." I was left to think what I would. I have since discovered that madame is quite certain that when a man and a woman live

together they are surely not married. This is just her natural native cynicism.

"Indeed, Madame de Sévigné was born in this very house and 'veritably' did she write some of her letters, perhaps in this very room. Then there was Victor Hugo; he lived but next door, and the famous Sully was on the other side." I interrupted and brought her back to one of the very practical considerations of life. "And how much does this palace cost, madame?"

"Less than nothing," she answered. "I assure you, monsieur, less than half of nothing."

Allowing for her natural and racial enthusiasm, I discovered that in truth the apartment cost not more than three quarters of nothing. We took it immediately; on the spot we took it. Then to make doubly sure I left the woman whom madame is sure cannot be my wife, to guard our

haven, while I brought many boxes and trunks and made of Number I Place des Vosges our home. By evening we were moved in and settled.

This is the way to find an apartment in Paris, the only way. Search and search and then one day there will fall into your hands what you have so long waited for. We have one of those perpetual leases, and there is no tree to die; and if you want what we have, your sons and daughters may bid for the hands of our children to be, for to them we shall leave this our Paris heritage.

Last evening as I returned from a walk, I met a woman whom I have often seen about our doorway. I thought I knew her, but it was some minutes before I realized that it was she who, thirty seconds too late, had tried to rent my precious apartment under my very nose. Can she be waiting for my crape and calla lillies?