THE SPARROWS' FRIEND
If you entered the Tuileries any fine morning (and surely the sun always shines in Paris, does it not?) by the gate opposite Frémiet's golden arrogant Joan of Arc, and turned into the gardens opposite the white Gambetta memorial, you were certain to see a little knot of people gathered around an old gentleman in a black slouch hat, with a deeply furrowed melancholy face, a heavy moustache, and the big comfortable slippers of one who (like so many a wise Frenchman) prefers comfort to conventionality or the outraged opinion of others. All about him, pecking among the grass of the little enclosed lawns, or in the gravel path at his feet, or fluttering up to his hands and down again, were sparrows—les moineaux: for this was M. Pol, the famous "Charmeur d'oiseaux."
There is a certain attraction about Nôtre Dame, its gloom, its purple glass and its history; Sainte Chapelle is not without a polished beauty; the Louvre contains a picture or two and a statue or two that demand to be seen and seen again; but this old retired civil servant with the magic power over the gamins of the Parisian roadways and chimney-stacks was far more magnetic to many a tourist. Those other of Baedeker's lions were permanent and would endure, but a frowsy furrowed old man in scandalous footwear who not only charmed the sparrows but quite clearly had confidential understandings with each was a marvel indeed and not to be missed. Nôtre Dame's twin towers on each side of that miracle of a rose window would be there next time; but would M. Pol? That is how we reasoned.
We did well to see him as often as we could, for he is now no more; he died in 1918.
For some time the old man had been missing from his accustomed haunts, through blindness, and Death found him at his home at Chandon-Lagache, in the midst of the composition of rhymes about his little friends, which had long been his hobby, and took him quite peacefully.
I have stood by M. Pol for hours, hoping to acquire something of his mystery; but these things come from within. He knew many of the birds by name, and he used to level terrible charges against them, as facetious uncles do with little nephews and nieces; but more French in character, that is all. One very innocent mite—or as innocent as a Paris sparrow can be—was branded as L'Alcoolique. Never was a bird less of an inebriate, but no crumb or grain could it get except upon the invitation, "Viens, prendre ton Pernod!" Another was Marguerite, saucy baggage; another, La Comtesse; another, L'Anglais, who was addressed in an approximation to our own tongue. Now and then among the pigmies a giant pigeon would greedily stalk: welcome too. But it was with his sparrows that M. Pol was at his best—remonstrative, minatory, caustic; but always humorous, always tender beneath.
Latterly he sold a postcard now and then, with himself photographed on it amid verses and birds; but that was a mere side issue. Often strangers would engage him in conversation, and he would reply with the ready irony of France; but he displayed little interest. His heart was with those others. One felt that the more he saw of men the more he liked sparrows.
The French have a genius for gay commemorative sculpture. If a statue of M. Pol were set up on the scene of his triumphs (and many things are less likely), with little bronze moineaux all about him, I for one should often make it an object of pilgrimage.
THE GOLDEN EAGLE
Mr. George Robey, C.B.E., our soi-disant Prime Minister of Mirth, is, in his songs, as a rule, more of a destructive than a reassuring philosopher. Indeed, the cheerful cynicism of one whose prosperity is invulnerable may be said to be his prevailing characteristic on the stage. But he once sang, in the person of a landlady, a song which had the refrain, calculated to comfort those in less happy circumstances, "It's a blessing that you never miss the things you've never had." Upon the respective merits of this sentiment and of Tennyson's famous dictum "'Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all" much might be said in discussion, although the two statements are not antagonistic; but at the moment, thinking of my poor friend the Golden Eagle, I vote wholly for Mr. Robey's optimism. It is a blessing that we never miss the things we've never had, and, conversely, it is a real calamity to lose something and be unable to forget it or to cease to regret it. In other words, it is better not to have had a treasure than, being parted from it, to be eternally wistful. Better, that is, for unwilling auditors of the tragedy.
So much for prelude.
It is a hard thing to be credited with power that one does not possess and have to disappoint a simple soul who is relying on one's help. That is a general proposition, but I was reminded of the Golden Eagle and a particular application of it by the remark which some one dropped the other day about Baedeker. "Shall those of us who have kept our Baedekers have the courage to carry them?" she asked; and instantly my mind flew to a certain Italian city and the host of the Aquila d'Oro.
Never can any guest in a hotel have received so much attention from the host as I did in the few days of my sojourn with him before I could bring myself to change to another. And not only from the host, but from every one on the staff, who bent earnest glances on me from morning till night. The Golden Eagle himself, however, did more than that: he buttonholed me. He was always somewhere near the door when I went out and again when I came in: a large, flabby Italian, usually in his shirt sleeves and wearing the loose slippers that strike such dismay into British travellers. "No foreigner," said an acute young observer to me recently, "ever has a good dog"; not less true is it that no Latin is ever soundly shod. But the Golden Eagle was not exactly slovenly; he owed it to his hotel not to be that; he was merely a vigilant padrone eternally concerned with his business.
Although there were other people staying under his roof, and they had better rooms than I and drank a better wine, it was I at whom he made this set. It was I for whom he waited and upon whom his great melancholy eyes rested so wistfully. For he was a Golden Eagle with a grievance, and I, in whose bedroom he had been asked to place a writing-table, I, who never went out without a note-book and who bought so many photographs, I, who so obviously was engaged in studying the city, no doubt for the purposes of a book, I it was who beyond question was in a position, by removing that grievance, to restore him to prosperity and placidity again.
And his grievance? The melancholy stamped upon that vast white countenance, although much of it was temperamental, and you might say national (for the Italian features in repose suggest disillusionment and fatalism far oftener than light-heartedness), and the dejection in the great shoulders, were due to the same cause. Baedeker, after years of honourable mention of the Aquila d'Oro among the hotels of the city, had suddenly, in the last edition, removed the asterisk against the name. The Golden Eagle had lost his star. Now you see the connection between this pathetic innkeeper (the last man in the world to call Boniface), our triumphant lion comique and the late Lord Tennyson. But in his case it was not better, either for him or me, that he had lost what he had loved. It would have been better, both for him and for me, if he had never had a star.
Why it had been taken from him he had no notion. He had always done his best; his wife had done her best; people were satisfied and came again; but the star had gone. Was not his hotel clean? The linen was soft, the attendance was good. He himself—as I could perceive, could I not?—never rested, nor did his wife. They personally superintended all. They spared nothing for the comfort of the house. Foolish innkeepers no doubt existed who were cheese-parers, but not he. He knew that wherever else economy was wise, it was not in the dining-room. Were not the meals generous and diversified? Could I name a more abundant collazione at 4 lire or a better pranzo at 5? Or served with more despatch? Was not his wine sound and far from dear?
And