The Princess Passes

								

mine, and I was Mercédès'.

CHAPTER IV
Pots, Kettles, and Other Things



    "Seared is, of course, my heart--but unsubdued

     Is, and shall be, my appetite for food."

                                   --C.S. CALVERLEY.



           *       *       *       *       *



    "A little buttery, and therein

       A little bin,

     Which keeps my little loaf of bread

       Unchipt, unflead;

     Some little sticks of thorn or brier

       Make me a fire."

                           --ROBERT HERRICK.

If any man had told me before I started, that in two days I should
find it a genuine sacrifice to stop driving a motor car, I should have
looked upon him as a polite lunatic. It was only because Jack could
drive faster than he dared to let me, and because I was ashamed to
tell Molly that after all I was not in a desperate hurry to reach
Paris or anywhere else, that I finally tore myself from the driver's
seat of the Mercédès. Afterwards, though I had not reached the stage
when confession is good for the soul, I sat wondering what there was
expensive and at the same time disagreeable which I could give up for
the sake of possessing a motor of my own. In various phases of my
mental and spiritual development, I had framed different conceptions
of a future state beyond this life. Never, even in my earliest years,
had I sincerely wished to be an angel with an undeserved crown
weighing down my forehead, and a harp, which I should be totally
incompetent to play, within my hand; but now it struck me that there
might be a worse sort of Nirvana than driving a 10,000 horsepower car
along a broad, straight road free from dogs, chickens, or any other
animals (except, perhaps, rich, knighted grocers), and reaching all
round Saturn's ring.
Dogs had been the one "little speck in garnered fruit" for me when
driving, for I love dogs and would not willingly injure so much as the
end hair of the most moth-eaten mongrel's tail; therefore my brain
searched a remedy against their onslaught, as I sat mute, inglorious,
in the tonneau, after my late triumphs.
We flashed on, passing the kilometre stones in quick succession. At
pretty little Mantes we crossed the Seine, and presently came into the
France I knew in my old, conventional way; for we passed St. Germain,
and so on to Paris by Le Pecq, Reuil, the long descent to the Pont de
Suresnes (which seemed to hold laughable memories for Jack and Molly),
through the Bois down the Champs Elysées, and to our hotel in the
Place Vendôme, where Jack announced that we had had a run of 130
miles. Winston and I flattered ourselves that Paris had few secrets
from us (though I don't doubt that five minutes' wrestling with
Baedeker might have made us feel small), and we had no wish to linger
at this season. But, if we were deaf to the sirens who sing in the Rue
de la Paix, Molly was not. She had discovered that there were some