, _en regle_.

Susan complained to me of this, wittily scornful, as we left the Red
Cross headquarters together on the evening of March eleventh, and
started toward her hotel down the dusky colonnade of the Rue de Rivoli.

"I'm worn out with them all!" she exclaimed. "All I want is to take care
of Jimmy's baby, and you'd think I was plotting to upset the government.
I shall, too, if some of these French officials don't presently exhibit
more common sense. It _ought_ to be upset--and simplified. Oh, I wish I
lived in a woman's republic, Ambo! Things would happen there, even if
they were wrong! No woman has patience enough to be bureaucratic."

"True," I chimed; "and you're right about men, all round. We're hopeless
incompetents at statecraft and such things, at running a reasonable
world--but we _can_ cook! And what you need for a change from all this
is a good dinner--a real dinner! It will renew your faith in the eternal
masculine--and we haven't had a bat, Susan, or talked nonsense, for
years and years! Come on, dear! Let's have a perfectly shameless bat
to-night and damn the consequences! What do you say?"

"I say--damn the consequences, Ambo! Let's! Why, I'd forgotten there was
such a thing as a bat left in the world!"

"But there is! Look--there's even a taxi to begin on!"

I hailed it; I even secured it; and we were presently clanking and
grinding on our way--in what must have been an authentic relic from the
First Battle of the Marne--toward the one restaurant in Paris. Unto each
man, native or alien, who knows his Paris, God grants but one, though it
is never the same. Well, I make no secret about it; my passion is deep
and openly proclaimed. For me, the one restaurant in Paris is
_Laperouse_; I am long past discussing the claims of rivals. It
is--simply and finally--_Laperouse_....

We descended before an ancient, dingy building on the Quai des
Grands-Augustins, passed through a cramped doorway into a tiny, ill-lit
foyer, climbed a steep narrow stairs, and were presently installed in a
corner of the small corner dining-room, with our backs neighborly
against the wall. In this room there happened that night to be but one
other diner; a small, bloated, bullet-headed civilian, with prominent
staring eyes; a man of uncertain age, but nearing fifty at a guess. We
paid little attention to him at first, though it soon became evident to
us that he was enjoying a Pantagruelian banquet in lonely state,
deliberatel