When I try to write of the Pavillon du Lac, memories crowd in on me thick and fast. I could have put this restaurant in almost any chapter of my Paris vistas.
But what place could a dinner at Montsouris enter more appropriately than on the night of July 18, 1918? We were celebrating better than we knew. The afternoon _communiqué_ brought with it the certainty that the miracle of 1914 had been repeated and that Paris was saved again. Did we realize that the day's fighting was the turning point of the war? I think not. But we acted as if we did.
Around our table were gathered the American General commanding the troops in Paris, my husband's chief on the Committee of Public Information, a French editor, colleagues of the American and British press, and one of our dearest French friends, whose work for his country in the hour of trial was bearing splendid fruit. Xavier was at his best. Had I not recently been in his beloved Alsace from which he had been an exile since childhood? From _hors d'oeuvres_ to _liqueurs_, there was an uninterrupted flow of good cheer. The strain of years was passing away.
The climax came when Jim Kerney picked up his cordial glass, twirled it with his thumb, looked at it regretfully, and sighed,
"The fellow who blew this glass was certainly short of breath."
[Illustration: Old Paris is disappearing]
From the Boulevard des Capucines to the Avenue de l'Opéra there is a convenient short-cut through the Rue Daunou. Newspaper men and other Americans do not always use the Rue Daunou for the short-cut. It is better known as the way to the Chatham bar. I ought to know nothing about the Chatham bar. My acquaintance with that corner should be limited to the Restaurant Volney and ladies' days at my husband's club opposite. But I do know the Chatham bar and for a perfectly respectable reason. It is where my old uncle used to be found when the clerk at his hotel said that he was not in. The uncle makes me think of a friend of his and a table with a little brass disk in the center of it to commemorate assiduous attendance through a long period of years in the Chatham bar. And the uncle's friend makes me think of the liberation of Lille. Association of ideas is a strange thing.