Paris [antikvár]

Introduction WHEN I lived in America during my long exile from Paris, my mind used to vvander ofT night after night in a tender and melancholy reverie on the city I loved above all others. So precise were my recollections, so clearly was I able to see each Street, each house, each shop, that I could even in my fancy stand gazing into a shop-window - in the Rue La Boétie perhaps, to admire a Bonnard or a Utrillo - or lean over the parapet of the Pont des Arts to watch the barges passing underneath. I could pass the time of day with the policeman who always stood with his cloak and white baton at the junction of the Rue du Havre and the Boulevard Haussmann. How well did they keep their character, those streets of Paris! There was always the order and harmony of the Rue de la Paix and the Place Vendöme, while the arcades of the Rue de Rivoli had something of the air of an orientál markét. Deserted and secretive, the classical galleries of the Palais-Royal, with their dingy bookshops and windows full of medals and orders, seemed haunted by the shades of the muscadins and merveilleuses, who would come to buy a Grand Cordon of the Aigle Blanc or a copy of the Mémoires of Casanova. In the upper stories, behind those balustraded, small-paned windows I could visualize those lovers of old Paris, Jean Cocteau and that wonderful Colette, who would invite you for a cup of tea, but regale you on your arrival with mulled wine with cinnamon, saying in her deep, rich voice: 'That'll warm you up better, and it's more French too.' Crossing the Place du Palais-Royal and passing in front of the Louvre, I would reach the Seine, to find birdfanciers, seed-merchants, and florists on the quays, and fishermen on the river-banks below. It was there that I had once discovered the American writer, John Steinbeck, catching minnows. 'What on earth are you doing there?' I asked him. T'm set on living in Paris like a real French writer,' he answered. I didn't like to teli him that neither Mauriac, nor Giraudoux, nor Jules Romains, nor I myself had ever held a fishing-rod. Why do books always look more attractive on the quays of the Seine than anywhere else? Partly because of those who sell them - the old black-shawled woman sitting on a camp-stool, keeping her feet warm with a chaufferette, the old man in the threadbare mackintosh - people who, besides being picturesque, really know their subject; partly because every time one raises one's eyes from a book they fali upon an old Street, a dome, a fretted spire, or, basking in the blue haze of the river, the two lovely red-brick houses which frame the entrance of the Place Dauphine; and because, as we wander along, our search for the rare and curious among books is presided over by the shadow of Notre-Dame and smiled on by the clear and tender skies of the Ile de Francé. On the other side of the Seine I used to make straight for the Rue Bonaparte, a Street largely given over to the smaller antique shops. Such a lot of ormolu clocks; so many Dresden shepherdesses! And if somé little masterpiece was tucked away among the snuff-boxes and the busts of Napoléon, there was a particular joy in discovering it oneself. From a dilapidated chiffonier or a dusty file, the dealer in autographs would bring out two admirable letters of Proust. The Rue Bonaparte and its neighbour the Rue des Saints-Péres were old, easy-going, and full of