Lovers at the Chameleon Club, Paris 1932 Read Online Free PDF

newborn cub fathered by the bear that was my childhood pet. For generations my family has been present for the birth of the bears, but I will not be so fortunate. I must accept my fate.”
    Making sure no guards are listening, he added, “I am an artist. The bank notes were my art. I intended to paper the walls of my mistress’s bedroom. The pain of being an artist is worse than the pain of losing an eye in battle. I am one of the few who have suffered both and can compare them.”
    So my visit with this artist-patriot ended, and our hero returned to his cell with such composure and courage that one couldn’t help seeing him as the latest in the line of heroic Hungarian martyrs.
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    Dear parents,
    I’m enclosing my latest story for the Magyar Gazette , with my original ending. The cheapskate editors, paying me by the word, cut my piece at “native land” and refused to print (or pay for) the final paragraphs, my favorites. I admit I went overboard about the martyrs and the Dreyfus affair, about which our country is still divided. And the information about the mistress and the counterfeit bank notes is not precisely what they want in a Hungarian family paper.
    Promise me that you will burn this letter as soon as you read it. But who else can I confide in?
    I invented the story. The interview never took place, because the prince has been put under twenty-four-hour surveillance. He’d been caught smuggling out a fortune (in counterfeit francs) in a botched escape attempt.
    I did attend the trial’s final session. I got a good look at the man, who is exactly as I described. And I feel sure that he would have said the words I took the liberty of putting into his mouth. I am especially proud of the passages about the bear cubs and the wallpaper.
    I suppose I am boasting, though underneath Mama’s chuckle, I can hear her disapproval of any lie, however small. While Papa must be shaking his head at my pandering to the Francophobia that grips our homeland, a sentiment responsible for so much heartbreak for Papa, who wanted to be an artist in Paris but, in order to support Mama and me, was forced to teach the sons of the provincial bourgeoisie. How grateful I am to live out the dream that was denied him!
    I have included the “interview” as an example of what I am doing to survive. I suppose I would be unhappier if this trash were closer to my art, if I were a writer, prostituting my talent, like my American friend Lionel Maine: the most honest, eloquent, passionately life-loving egomaniac I have ever met. Like me, he is in love with Paris, and Paris loves us both: the rare romantic triangle that inspires no rivalry or resentment. When he joins me in my nighttime rambles through the city, I feel that he is trying to put into words what I am trying to show in my photos. It makes me doubly grateful that my gift is for the visual image and not the written word as I crank out jingoist trash for the Magyar Gazette .
    I hope you will not misinterpret this letter as a complaint about the generous allowance you continue to send. I feel nothing but love and gratitude as I kiss you,
    Gabor
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    PS. To protect your privacy and mine, I have adopted a pen name: Tsenyi. That it means genius is an immodest little joke that may amuse our fellow Hungarians.

From The Devil Drives: The Life of Lou Villars
    BY NATHALIE DUNOIS
    Chapter Two: A Stranger Arrives
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    ONE MORNING, A tall man with a cane arrived at the convent. The man had thin, fox-colored hair and a wispy, ragged beard. His gray eyes, behind wire-rimmed spectacles, were hooded but alert. Word spread that the visitor was Sister Francis’s brother. The girls watched, as if at a magic show, as the stranger flipped a lever that turned his cane into a stool on a tripod with pointed legs. He stabbed his chair into the ground beside the hockey field and sat down.
    Lou knew he was watching her. She made one goal after another until the