In London the thing would have constituted a public scandal; in New York there would have been a newspaper hullabaloo over it. It was typical of Paris, I think, that the street crowds became infected with the spirit which filled the roistering firemen and cheered them as they went merrily racketing back and forth. Nor, so far as I could ascertain, were the firemen disciplined; at least there was no mention in print of the incident, though a great many persons, the writer included, witnessed it.
At seven o'clock the following morning I was standing at the window of my bedchamber when something of a very violent and a highly startling nature went off just beyond the line of housetops and tree tops which hedged my horizon view to the northward. Another booming detonation, and yet another, followed in close succession. I figured to my own satisfaction that one of the enemy planes which were chased away the night before had taken advantage of the cloaking mists of the new day to slip back and pay his outrageous compliments to an unsuspecting municipality. Anyhow a fellow becomes accustomed to the sounds of loud noises in wartimes, and after a while ceases to concern himself greatly about their causes or even their effects unless the disturbances transpire in his immediate proximity. Life in wartime in a country where the war is consists largely in getting used to things that are abnormal and unusual. One takes as a matter of course occurrences that in peace would throw his entire scheme of existence out of gear. He is living, so to speak, in a world that is turned upside down, amid a jumble of acute and violent contradictions, both physical and metaphysical.
With two companions I set out for a certain large hotel which had the reputation of being able to produce genuine North American breakfasts for North American appetites. In the main grillroom we had just finished compiling an order, which included fried whiting, ham and eggs, country style, and fried potatoes, when a fire-department truck went shrieking through the street outside, its whistle blasting away as though it had a scared banshee locked up in its brazen throat.
There were not many persons in the room—to your average Frenchman his dinner is a holy rite, but his breakfast is a trifling incident—but most of these persons rose from their tables and straightway departed. The woman cashier hurried off with her hat on sidewise, which among women the world over is a thing betokening agitation.
The head waiter approached us with our bill in his tremulous hand, and bowing, wished to know whether messieurs would be so good as to settle the account now. By his manner lie sought to indicate that such was the custom of the house. We told him firmly that we would pay after we had eaten and not a minute sooner. He gave a despairing gesture and vanished, leaving the slip upon the tablecloth. Somebody hastily deposited within our reach the food we had ordered and withdrew.
Before we were half through eating a very short, very frightened-looking boy in buttons appeared at our elbows, pleading to know whether we were ready for our hats and canes. Since he appeared to be in some haste about it and since he was so small a small boy and so uneasy, we told him to bring them along. He did bring them along, practically instantaneously, in fact, and promptly was begone without waiting for a tip—an omission which up until this time had never marred the traditional ethics of hat-check boys either in France or anywhere else.
Presently it dawned upon us that as far as appearances went we were entirely alone in the heart of a great city. So when we were through eating we left the amount of the breakfast bill upon a plate and ourselves departed from there. The lobby of the hotel and the office and the main hallway were entirely deserted, there being neither guests nor functionaries in sight. But through a grating in the floor came up a gush of hot air, licking our legs as we passed. This may have been the flow from a unit of the heating plant, or then again it may have been the hot and feverish breathing of the habitués of that hotel, 'scaping upward through a vent in the subcellar's roof.
Outside, in the streets, the shopkeepers had put up their iron shutters. At intervals the plug-plug-blooie! of fresh explosions punctuated the hooting of fire engines racing with the alarm in adjacent quarters. Overhead, ranging and quartering the upper reaches of the sky, like pointer dogs in a sedge field, were scores of French aëroplanes searching, and searching vainly, for the unseen foeman.
The thing was uncanny; it was daunting and smacked of witchcraft. Here were the projectiles dropping down, apparently from directly above, and they were bursting in various sections, to the accompaniments of clattering débris and shattering glass; and yet there was neither sight nor sound of the agencies responsible for the attack. All sorts of rumours spread, each to find hundreds of earnest advocates and as many more vociferous purveyors.
One theory, often advanced and generally retailed, was that the Germans had produced a new type of aëroplane, with a noiseless motor, and capable of soaring at a height where it was invisible to the naked eye. Another possible solution for the enigma was that with the aid of spies and traitors the Germans had set up a gun fired by air compression upon a housetop in the environs and were bombarding the city from beneath the protection of a false roof. In the doorway of every abri the credulous and the incredulous held heated arguments, dodging back under shelter, like prairie dogs into their holes, at each recurring crash.