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Then with the disappointments and ironies of the Peace some of his cynical detachment returned. He was not wholly French—there was Austrian blood in his veins—and it was this same Austrian blood, perhaps, that led him, hating Germany as he did, to criticise France with a frankness that infuriated his Parisian circle. And so, rather happy that he had regained once more his impersonality, he returned to his once-so-beloved London.

The impression that he had had of it during his absent post-war years—impression gathered in the main from English novels and newspapers—was that his dear London was running swiftly to the dogs, the Upper Classes drinking cocktails and dancing eternally to the jazziest of music, the Middle Classes hopelessly and aimlessly impoverished, the Lower Classes rebellious, revolutionary, idle, and dole-fed.

He found, to his pleasure, his old rooms in Clarges Street vacant, and the stout, amiable Forrester, landlord, valet, and gossip, older but otherwise unchanged. The cost of living had doubled, of course, but so it had everywhere, and for the rest, in his first week's survey he could not, save for the congestion of traffic and the ruin of Regent Street, see that his London was very greatly altered. There were still the flower-women round the fountain in Piccadilly Circus, still the lions and Nelson, still the decent-looking fellows outlined against the freshness of the Green Park, still the sanctum by the fireplace under the stairs in St. James's Club, still Big Ben and the chastity of Curzon Street, the higgledy-piggledy of Shepherd Market, the Christian Science Church, and the cloistered shabbiness of the Albany. His superficial landmarks were all there.