"Germaine desires to see Italy and Greece. She has saved my worthless life. The return is small enough. We may manage it on my balance at the bank. If we can't—well, one might as well try conclusions with the gods in Athens as in Paris."
"Lake Leman, February 2, 1924.
"A few months ago I was telling the patronne of the blackguardly café in the Rue St. Marc that I longed to escape the blights of a northern winter. When I coughed she recommended her most expensive liqueur! A few weeks ago I was tossing and turning in delirium in the ugliest and coldest little room in Paris. To-day I am sitting on the deck of a white steamer on a blue lake, gazing at sun-gilded, snowy mountaintops, breathing air which stings like rum. Germaine is throwing cakes to the birds and watching them swoop into the icy water.
"A few miles away is Clarens, the enchanted bosquet of Rousseau's Julie and St. Preux. Byron and Shelley once came to visit it. Poor silly pilgrims."
"Hotel Porta Rossa, Florence, February 18, 1924.
"For her the picturesque, the romantic, the idealistic are elements with which life is garnished. For me they are the dish, and the garnishing is what is commonly known as fact. 'I'm so glad it's you who are taking me on this trip,' she says. Which merely means that the excitement of travel is for her the present dish, and my society the garnishing. Somehow I was unable to tell her that her society is the present dish for me, that Italy and Greece and a whole geography-full of lands to be traversed are merely the garnishing, and even overseasoned for my present strength; for she should know it.
