Page:Keeping the Peace.pdf/198



S a young and engaging duckling takes to water, so Edward took to Paris. Nothing surprised him. Everything seemed natural, foreordained and comforting. There must have been. French blood in him. He absorbed words and phrases, remembered them, and from the first spoke them not too badly.

The letters with which Townley had provided him had made many things easy. He had the same rooms—five flights up in the rue des Saints-Pères—that Townley had lived in. He had the same kind old landlady. He traded in the same art store. And many established artists, students in Townley's day, became his friends. His talents were obvious. Young and old agreed that he had only to work hard. And he did.

For a few golden days he tramped Paris with his eyes wide open. Hunger always seemed to overtake him within a few steps of some charming little winey restaurant which nobody had ever found before and which nobody would ever find again. The distances were nothing to his country