Ernest Walsh edited a magazine called This Quarter.

A rumor went around that it was going to award a contributor a substantial prize.

At that time two people could live in Paris for $5 a day, plus travel to the Voralburg, to winter.

Walsh took Hemingway to lunch at the best restaurant on the Boulevard St.-Michel and treated him to oysters and a bottle of Pouilly-Fuissé, the expensive marennes, not the cheaper portugaises.

Walsh wanted a good steak, rare, but instead Hemingway ordered two tournedos with sauce Bérnaise. That's not a steak-it's perfumed meat.

For a red wine, they had a Châteauneuf du Pape. This is not a lunch wine.

Walsh told Hemingway he was going to get the award.

Hemingway said he didn't deserve it. I don't think he believed Walsh. I believe he thought Walsh was a con man.

Years later, he asked Joyce if Walsh had promised him the award and he said he had.

They figured he had promised it to Ezra Pound, too.

I don't know why Hemingway felt he had to be so nasty to Walsh, after he was dead--he died young--unless it was to prove he was savvy, and couldn't be taken in by a con man.

He was worldly, and tough.

He had a code.

The Hemingway code.

This is sort of like the Da Vinci Code.

Next comes The Lost Symbol.