Free Emily and the Lost City of Urgup by Gerry Hotchkiss Page B

get there?” asked Emily. “I’m afraid not,” said the Professor. “Alexandria today is a very different city, full of people from all over the Mediterranean, who wish to live in the sun cheaply. For every book now lost there is a bar.”
    The boat from Alexandria was a cargo ship which carried four staterooms for passengers. Madam Bibi was to meet them in Paris.
    Professor Witherspoon and Emily arrived in Paris in early August. They were greeted at the hotel by Madam Bibi, exclaiming, “Ah, mes cheres, relax, for you are with maybe the only French man or woman in Paris. All the rest are tourists.”
    Tourists?” cried Emily.
    “Oui,” said Madam Bibi, “It is August and all Frenchmen go on vacation in August. We have free reign of all the museums and Cathedrals, but you will be hearing English and German and Italian and other languages, rarely French and certainly not Parisian French. If only you had arrived last month on the Quatorze!” “Fourteen?” asked Emily.
    “Not fourteen, but July Fourteen, the celebration of the successful French Revolution, the beginning of the Republic rather than the Monarchy. Let’s pretend and celebrate it is the Fourteenth, no?, professor,” she added. “Indeed, we shall,” he said.
    Back in Cairo, the thieves were tried and convicted of attempted robbery of ancient artifacts. The sentence carried orders to receive five years in prison. Professor Dasam knew that the prisons of Cairo were notorious for unhealthy cells and food. Too many miscreants, people who had broken the law in many different ways, were sick the entire time they were in prison. He arranged that the four thieves would receive in place of a prison cell, daily work in the bowels of an ocean liner shoveling coal into its boilers for the same period of time.
    As Emily and Professor Witherspoon were dining on the top deck of the cargo ship, the four thieves were tied up below, to be sent to France and placed aboard the next French Liner leaving from Le Havre.
     

CHAPTER FOURTEEN: The True Facts

    EMILY, THE PROFESSOR, and Bibi found a small intimate bistro where an accordion player was singing French songs. After they were seated, Bibi excused herself and left the table. Emily spied her talking to the owner of the bistro who smiled and watched as Bibi returned to their table. Suddenly a very solemn march was played by the accordionist and everybody around Emily, including Bibi and the professor, stood up, standing at attention. Emily stood. When the music ended they all clapped and sat down.
    “What was that?” asked Emily. “It is the Marseillaise, our national anthem and I shall teach you its words in English and French. You must admit that it is far grander than Mr. Francis Scott Key’s?”
    “I think the Star Spangled Banner is just as thrilling,” protested Emily, although she secretly agreed with Madam Bibi,
    Before they left for Le Havre the next morning Madam Bibi strolled along the banks of the Seine with Emily. “Count the bookstalls, mon chere,” she said. “You can determine how civilized a city is by its number of book stores.” “You must come to our house, then,” Emily replied, “it is all books.” Madam Bibi gave her a curious look. Was Emily teasing her?
    They took a first class compartment in the train from Paris to Le Havre. It had its own special door inside and outside the train, plush velvet seats but not room for the luggage, which was in a special luggage car attached to the train. Emily watched the countryside roll by. Every piece of earth was under some cultivation. Fields of red poppies, yellow sunflowers, vegetables, walnut trees, vineyards swept by. “France has been called the breadbasket of Europe,” Professor Witherspoon noted. “A small country by our size, it uses every inch of soil to grow something.”
    That night they stayed at a small inn run by an elderly couple who offered a glass of wine to Emily along with the professor and Madam Bibi. The professor