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492 / A M E S 1 1920 jhis joviality and explosiveness, while Vanderpyl was a little awed by thiswriter who seemed to know too much and carried himself like a bishopwho was still a seminarist at heart. Joyce was not above playing the pedagogue;one day he dined with Vanderpyl and another writer, EdmondJaloux, at a restaurant in the rue St. Honore. As they drank champagneand Fendant de Sion, Jaloux, who happened to be carrying a copy ofFlaubert's Trois Contes, began to praise the faultlessness of its style andlanguage. Joyce, in spite of his own admiration for Flaubert, bristled,'Pas si bien que ga. II commence avec une faute.' And taking the book heshowed them that in the firstsentence of'Un Cceur simple,' 'Pendant undemi-siecle, les bourgeoises de Pont-l'Evequeenvierent d Mme Aubain saservante Felicite,' envierent should be enviaient, since the action is continuedrather than completed. Then he thumbed through the book, evidentlywith a number of mistakes in mind, and came to the last sentenceof the final story, 'Herodias,' 'Comme elle etait tres lourde, Us la portaientaltemativement.' 'Altemativement is wrong,' he announced, 'since thereare three bearers.'* 41In mid-August Joyce received his firstdirect communication from T. S.Eliot, whose shape Ezra Pound had been limning for seven years. Eliotwrote from London that Pound had entrusted to his keeping a packagefor Joyce, which he would bring with him on August 15 to the Hotel del'Elysee. i hope you can dine with me that evening. Please,' he saidgraciously, and added, 'You won't have time to answer. But pleasecome.' 42Actually Eliot was not traveling alone, but with WyndhamLewis, whose book Tarr, published like A Portrait by the Egoist Press,Joyce had read in Zurich, and whose story Cantleman's Spring Mate hadearned the Little Review its only suppression that was not caused by Joyce'sUlysses. Lewis's work had impressed Joyce, but he was still dubious ofEliot's verse.Eliot and Lewis duly arrived at their hotel, Eliot having lugged Pound'sclumsy parcel on train, boat, and train again. Joyce, accompanied byGiorgio, came over to see them, and the presence of Lewis startled andpleased him. He offered his hand with his customary limpness. 43Lewis'sadmirable description reveals that Joyce had at last shed his tennis shoes:'I found an oddity, in patent-leather shoes, large powerful spectacles, anda small gingerbread beard; speaking half in voluble Italian to a scowlingschoolboy; playing the Irishman a little overmuch perhaps, but in amusinglymannered technique.' 44For the moment Joyce seemed more mannerthan man. The meeting proceeded with a dignity befitting an encounterof Titans, but undercut by Pound's gift. As Lewis recounts,* Joyce's grammatical cavils were plausible but mistaken. Both Gustave Lanson and MauriceGrevisse assert that the imperfect is not appropriate when the past action, however continuous,is enclosed in a specific period (such as 'un demi-siecle) and contemplated fromthe present. French lexicographers, similarly, allow altemativement to mean simply 'turnby turn' as well as 'turn and turn about.'