A link with the past.

Abstract

We had an uneventful journey to Paris. We landed there in the early morning, without any addresses whatever, or any knowledge of French. Father took us to the station restaurant and ordered tea. After a good deal of gesticulation it was supplied. We asked, in English, for the Pasteur Institute. The words, "Pasteur Institute," explained our presence and our needs. Some kindly person (we had a little audience by that time) fetched a taxicab driver who could speak English. He said, "I is English, I will take you to where you want to go." He took us to a hotel near the institute. Of the proprietor and all the staff, only the first mentioned could speak or understand English. He had acquired a working knowledge of it while serving in India. We were given breakfast in the dining room among a number of men in white smocks-a basin of coffee and a roll. Our bedroom was excellent, roomy, and furnished as a bed-sitting room.At 1 pm we walked into the institute. We were taken to the official interpretess. She said she came from County Antrim, that she also kept a hotel and catered specially for British people. She had then staying in it four or five Irish people and a number of English people, and she invited us to go with her. After we had seen the doctor and had our injections, she took us home with her. Being young and innocent, I asked father to go with her. We went to the original hotel after lunch to collect our baggage. Our room was locked. The proprietor's wife treated us to a passionate, bitter, and red-faced harangue, of which we did not understand a word. The proprietor was, deliberately I think, absent. Father put down on the counter the agreed payment for a day's board and lodging. After much talking and delay we were given our luggage. The explanation of the trouble is that our new landlady, taking advantage of her position in the institute, was in the habit of stealing the British customers from the first hotel. They had been fighting over it so bitterly and noisily that our original landlord had been forbidden to go to the institute.That is a digression.