The Marseilles express used to arrive at Paris at an outlandish hour. It was not yet six when we were ready to leave the Gare de Lyon. Two porters, laden down with hand-luggage, asked where we wanted to go. We did not know. The Paris hotels that had been our habitats in days past were no longer possible, even temporarily. There was no mother to foot my bills, and Herbert wasn't a bachelor with only his own room and food to pay for. I suggested the possibility of a small hotel by the station. The porters took us out on the Boulevard Diderot. Across the street was a hotel (whose gilt letters, however, did not omit the invariable adjective "grand") that looked within our means.
Once settled and breakfasted, the family council tackled the first problem--Scrappie, gurgling on the big bed. Ever since she was born we had been traveling, and she naturally had to be with us all the time. Only now, after five weeks of parenthood, did the novel and amazing fact dawn upon us that no longer could we "just go out." Scrappie was to be considered. Without Scrappie, we could have set forth immediately upon our search for a place to live. With Scrappie--?
There always is a _deus ex machina_. In our case it was a _dea_. Marie still lived in Paris. The contact had never been lost, and when we went through Paris on our honeymoon the year before, I had taken my husband to show him off to Marie. It was decided that I should go out immediately and find her. A month before we had written that we were coming to Paris in June, and she would be expecting us. Marie, and Marie alone, meant freedom of movement. I could not think of trusting my baby to anyone else.
The address was at the tip of my tongue--22 Rue de Wattignies. A few people know vaguely of the battle, but how many life-long Parisians know the street? Not the _boulevardiers_ or the _faubouriens_ of Saint-Germain, or the Americans, North and South, of the Etoile Quarter. And yet the Rue de Wattignies is an artery of importance, copiously inhabited. We had gone in a cab last year, and remembered that it was somewhere beyond the Bastille. At the corner of the street beyond our hotel, just opposite the great clock tower of the Gare de Lyon, I saw the Bastille column not far away. Why waste money on cabs? To the right of the Bastille lay the Rue de Wattignies, and not very far to the right. I remembered perfectly, and started out unhesitatingly.