Hugo Stern positively bumped into me in
the Rue Des Beaux Arts yesterday evening: he is German in everything except his
conversation, which is Greek.
'Oscar,
dear,' he said to me, 'we are celebrating the feast of St Zephyrinus. Do come and join us.'
'You
are a day late,' I told him, 'but perhaps the Pope will not hear of it
immediately.'
And
so I accompanied him to the Kalisaya. It was not a successful occasion. Two young Americans joined us. They insisted that they had been thrown out
of Harvard for immoral conduct. I told
them that it was immoral to go there in the first place. Then they brought me an absinthe: Americans
always buy drinks when they are shocked.
They both had the horrid habit of calling each other 'she' and
eventually, when they had vine leaves in their hair, they insisted on extending
the same courtesy to me.
'She's
a very famous woman,' one of them said to the other. I was quite disgusted: to have suffered all I
have suffered, to have endured the obloquy of the civilised world, and then to
end up as the literary equivalent of Boadicea - well,
it is ridiculous.
After
I had left the bar with my dignity unimpaired, my fiacre was involved in an
awful accident. We were turning into the
Rue Bonaparte when the cab lurched into a horse-and-cart, and I was propelled
forward banging my head against the low wooden rail. My lip was cut almost in two, and I shed as
much blood as a martyr, but a most curious thing happened which I still cannot
explain. I laughed. I laughed out loud. For no reason I laughed at my own injury.