B667 <=> B669 [BTG XXXVII France, p. 668]

“After they had disappeared from sight in the crowd, we began to discuss in order to understand the reason why that genuine French couple came to be in this part of their ‘capital.’

“After various surmises, we unanimously agreed that that couple probably lived in some outlying part of genuine French Paris and had gone, for some family feast or other at their relatives, to another part of this French Paris which lay just on the opposite side.

“Evidently at that family feast they had drunk rather excessively and returning home after the feast, they did not want to make a detour, and decided to take the direct route. And this direct route evidently passed just by the Grand Cafe.

“Probably for this reason alone, did these genuine French people appear in this part of Paris.

“Talking, we continued to look at the strolling crowd decked out in the latest fashions.

“Although the majority of them were decked out in these latest fashions, yet from everything, it was obvious that these clothes of theirs had only just been bought – today or yesterday – and from close observation and comparison of their faces with their clothes, one could, without doubt, be convinced that in the ordinary process of their existence at home they rarely had the possibility of being so richly dressed and of feeling so free from care.

“When, among these ‘visiting foreign princes,’ as some of the ‘natives’ call them, all sorts of also foreign ‘professionals-of-both-sexes,’ already ‘well-acclimatized’ to that part of Paris, were walking ‘in mass,’ my new acquaintance, the young Persian, suggested to me that he should become my ‘Paris cicerone’ and that we should go to what are called the ‘disreputable places of Paris’ and look at French ‘depravity.’