It was beginning to look like Harty for Perrault's son-in-law, when
Bowen came along. Bowen was the expert who came to overhaul the wireless
plant in the yard. An easy-going, but wide-awake sort, Bowen, who
seemed to have been everywhere and who could talk of where he had been,
talk without end, and always with the intimate little touches which you
never found in the guidebooks. He captured old Perrault at the first
assault. Old Perrault from behind his counter happening to catch a stray
word, listened, looked up, and, noting the animated features, hastily
signalled the new-comer to come out of the crowd. One minute later he
had put the vital question: Had Mr. Bowen ever been to Paris?

To Paris! Bowen started to touch the end of a finger for every time he
had been to Paris. Old Perrault could not wait for him to finish. "And
the Champs Élysées, Mister Bowen, you have been there?"

"The Champs Élysées? If I had a dollar, M'sieu Perrault--"

"Eh?" The old man wanted to hear him say that "M'sieu" in just that way
again--"if you had one dollar, Mister Bowen?"

Bowen understood. "Yes, if I had a dollar, M'sieu, for every time I sat
on one of those chairs inside the sidewalk--in under the trees, you
know, M'sieu--and watched the autos go by! Talk about autos!--there's
the place for autos, coming down from that big Napoleon Arch. Some arch,
that, isn't it? Yes, sir--down from there to the Place de la Concorde
and back again, around the Arch and on to the Bois. And there's a sight
for a man, too! To sit out on the Bois sidewalk, M'sieu, your chair
almost under the bushes, and watch those cabs and autos in the late
afternoon, coming on dark. Count them? No more than you could count