The other way was to climb
steeply up to the edge of the
woods and then go across the
top of the hills through the pine
woods, and then out to the edge
of a meadow and down across
this meadow to the bridge.
There were birches along the
stream and it was not big, but
narrow, clear and fast, with
pools where it had cut under
the roots of the birches. At the
Hotel in Triberg the proprietor
had a fine season. It was very
pleasant and we were all great
friends. The next year came the
inflation and the money he had
made the year before was not
enough to buy supplies to open
the hotel and he hanged
himself. You could dictate that,
but you could not dictate the
Place Contrescarpe where the
flower sellers dyed their
flowers in the street and the
dye ran over the paving where
the autobus started and the old
men and the women, always
drunk on wine and bad mare;
and the children with their
noses running in the cold; the
smell of dirty sweat and
poverty and drunkenness at the
Cafe' des Amateurs and the
whores at the Bal Musette they
lived above. The concierge who
entertained the trooper of the
Garde Republicaine in her
loge, his horse-hair-plumed
helmet on a chair. The
locataire across the hall whose
husband was a bicycle racer
and her joy that morning at
the cremerie when she had
opened L'Auto and seen where
he placed third in Paris-Tours,
his first big race. She had
blushed and laughed and then
gone upstairs crying with the
yellow sporting paper in her
hand. The husband of the
woman who ran the Bal
Musette drove a taxi and when
he, Harry, had to take an early
plane the husband knocked
upon the door to wake him and
they each drank a glass of
white wine at the zinc of the
bar before they started. He
knew his neighbors in that
quarter then because they all
were poor.
Around that Place there were
two kinds; the drunkards and
the sportifs. The drunkards
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