Page:Peter Whiffle (1922).djvu/67

 and Fontainebleau. I inspected the little hotel in the Rue des Beaux-Arts where Oscar Wilde died and I paid my respects to his tomb in Pere-Lachaise. The fig-leaf was missing from the heroic figure on the monument. It had been stolen, the cemeteryguard informed me, par une jeune miss anglaise, who desired a souvenir. I drank champagne cocktails, sitting on a stool, at the American bar in the Grand Hotel. I drank whisky and soda, ate salted nuts, and talked with English racing men at Henry's, bar, under the delightful brown and yellow mural decorations, exploiting ladies of the 1880 period with bangs, and dresses with bustles, and over-drapings, and buttons down the front. I enjoyed long bus rides and I purchased plays in the arcades of the Odéon. I went to the races at Chantilly. I drank cocktails at Louis's bar in the Rue Racine. Louis Doerr, the patron, had worked as a bar-man in Chicago and understood the secrets of American mixed drinks. Doubtless, he could have made a Fireman's Shirt. He divided his time between his little bar and his atelier, where he gave boxing lessons to the students of the quarter. When he was teaching the manly art, Madame Doerr manipulated the shaker. I attended services at Les Hannetons and Maurice's Bar and I strolled through the Musée de Cluny, where I bought postcards of chastity belts and instruments of torture. I read Maupassant in the Parc Monceau. I took in the naughty revues at Parisiana, the Ba-ta-clan, and