Come, I am taking you to the Lutetia hotel
One of the first bars in the Art Deco style
A country fresco illuminates the bar
Hotel with a name derived from parisian History,

Fluctuat nec mergitur
Your motto sprawls in letters of fire
Above the sparkling bar
And Saint-Germain-des-Prés yawns in the sun

James Joyce played the piano there at night
Saint-Exupéry slept seven nights
In the hotel’s linen sheets
Albert Cohen dictated Belle du Seigneur

May-June 1940 Charles-de-Gaulle stayed there
The bombings hit London
The hostess of the Lutetia hotel has beautiful eyelashes
But the German army occupies Paris

The hotel was occupied by the Abwehr (the intelligence and counter-espionage service of the German General Staff)
It becomes the headquarters of crime
And the hostess is replaced
By a redhead with a deep voice

Two employees of the hotel
Conceal the great vintages in a cache
Time slides on the Lutetia
Like a skater in a hurry

At the Liberation the hotel must prove its merit
And put its rooms at the disposal of France
Back from the Nazi concentration camps,
The deportees wander within its walls

History splashes on the marble walls of the Lutetia
In the cold smile, the clenched teeth of this thin man
And the hostess of the bar dances between her customers
Waiting for the XXIst century