juillet 1913 As I walk into the salon she throws her novel down. ‘I thought we might pay a visit to my great friend Robert Peyssac. The studio gossip is that he has a film in the preparatory stages, and I want to talk to him about a role before the news gets out.’ Without waiting for my answer she leans across to pull the bell. Hubert punches the horn despairingly as we rumble over the Pont-Neuf onto the Ile St Louis: horses and carts bombard the automobile, an omnibus trundles past, two rows of blank-faced passengers crammed in, their hat brims touching. At the end of the bridge a bread delivery-woman steps off the kerb, stops dead in the road and stares in at us, her hands gripping the arms of her cart; she mumbles her lip, and then proceeds slowly across the road, threading between the stopped vehicles. Hubert leans out towards her, tapping the side of his head. ‘Leave us here,’ Terpsichore says, as we turn onto the little central street of the island, ‘his house is just next door.’ Hubert rides the car up onto the pavement and hops down from the driver’s seat to let us out.
