“Name of a name of a name!” An old French colonel, standing beside Boone, was muttering brokenly to himself. Boone could see his fingernails whiten as he grasped the back of the seat in front of him. Boone contented himself with Frances’s hand, and together they gazed up at the singer. There she stood—slender, radiant, beautiful, with not too much on, shedding abundant, genuine tears over an artificial complexion. She was Paris—Paris personified—Paris unclothed and in her right mind—Paris come to her own again.
The curtain fell—rose—fell—rose—while the storm of cheers raged. About the tenth time it rose again, to stay. The girl had both her hands pressed to her face, and her body was shaking. But another chord from the orchestra—the same chord—steadied her. She dropped her hands by her sides, uplifted her limpid voice, and sang the Marseillaise once more.
But this time her entourage had increased. Upon the outskirts of the stage—sidling in from the wings, peeping round the proscenium, mingling bodily with the glittering, shimmering company—there appeared another throng. Scene-shifters; dressers; lusty firemen; brown-faced poilus; gendarmes; mysterious individuals in decayed dress-suits; little boys and girls, indicative of the fact that even revue artists contract domestic ties—they all edged on, and sang the Marseillaise too. If the girl in the centre was Paris, this shining, grimy, patient, cheerful, wistful, triumphant throng around her was France. France—with the black shadow of forty years rolled away from her horizon! France—the much-enduring, the all-surviving, the indomitable; with her beloved capital inviolate still, and her lost provinces coming back to her! Gallia Victrix. No wonder they sang. La Guerre est gagnée—at last!
There let us leave them all—on the crest of the wave. La Guerre est gagnée. God send that we tackle La Paix as successfully!
THE END
The Riverside Press
CAMBRIDGE . MASSACHUSETTS
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