_The echo is from as far back as the year 1899. It is late September. By the entrance of a café, on a street opening into the Place de l’Opera, three Englishmen sit waiting at a small table, relieved for the moment from the solicitations of the garçon anxious to serve them their aperitifs. It is all very well for the café to call itself the “Vieille Rose”: no doubt by gaslight it lives charmingly up to its name; but seen in the noonday’s glare, its interior upholsterings are unmistakably magenta. From the warm sunshade of its awning the street view is charming; and while one of the trio watches it benevolently with an accustomed eye, the other two, encountering Paris for the first time, find in its brisk movement the attraction of novelty. But it is a reversion to English habit which makes one of them presently look at his watch a little anxiously._ L.H. Is he generally so late as this? R.R. Generally never as early. L.H. You are sure you said the Café Vieille Rose? R.R. (_with a disarming smile_). As well as I could, my dear L.H. I can’t say it quite like you. L.H. I don’t pretend to talk French: hearing it spoken absorbs all my faculties. R.R. Oh, but you should! They are so charming about it: they pretend to understand you. L.H. Well, I did screw up courage to go to a French barber yesterday. R.R. Ah! That explains it. I was wondering. L.H. You might well. When I looked in the glass after he had finished me I saw myself no longer English, but Parisian. R.R. (_enjoying himself_). No, L.H., no! Not Parisian, I assure you!—Alsatian. L.H. No longer English was all that mattered: “tout à fait transformé,” as I managed to say to the man. And he—magnificently: “Mais oui, Monsieur, c’était bien necessaire!” Is that what you call French politeness? R.R. Rather the “amour propre” of the artist, I should say. L.H. In this nation of artists one gets too much of it. H.A. There isn’t such a thing as a nation of artists. The French only appear so because they take a more transparent pride in themselves than we do. They haven’t yet discovered that modesty is the best vanity. R.R. Is that your own, Herbie, or did you get it from Oscar yesterday? H.A. No. I didn’t see him. I invented it as I got up this morning, meaning to let it occur as an impromptu. Now it’s gone. R.R. Oh, no. Say it again, my dear boy, say it again! We shall all be charmed: so will he. L.H. Look; there he is! Who’s with him? R.R. Davray. I asked Davray to go and bring him, so as to make sure. You know him, don’t you? You like him? L.H. A Frenchman who can talk English always goes to my heart. R.R. Davray is Anglomaniac: he not only talks it, he thinks it: signs himself “Henry,” like an Englishman, and has read more of your books than I have. L.H. One? R.R. Don’t be bitter, L.H. I read them—in the reviews—regularly.