My luggage is all packed and Bill has strapped it up for me. I have said adieu to the Curé and the Colonel. Madame the Caretaker has kissed me on both cheeks and dropped a tear over me. Now I am waiting for the A. R. jitney to come and take me to the station.
A horrid thought has just occurred to me. The captain’s cognac must be still in the corner of the store-room shelf. What will the secretary think?
CHAPTER VII: VERDUN—THE FRENCH
Paris, January 12.
It is fortunate that the world looks tolerantly on a certain instability in the feminine mind. When I left Mauvages there was just one thought in my head,—to go straight home. I have been twenty-four hours in Paris; already my resolution is wavering. It’s all on account of what they said to me at the Headquarters office.
Paris is truly a different city from the one I last saw in September on my way back from Saint Malo; the streets thronged with people, and brightly lighted at night, the shop windows gay and inviting, freed from their patterned lattices of paper strips which formerly protected the glass from the concussions caused by shells and bombs. In the Place de la Concorde the statue representing the City of Strasbourg, divested of the mourning wreaths which it has worn ever since 1870, now smiles triumphantly above a mass of flags and flowers; and, most thrilling of all, the crouched grey guns of Germany, like so many dumb impotent monsters, throng the Place de la Concorde, stretch in a double line along the Champs Elysées all the way to the Arc de Triomphe.
Everywhere the shop windows display a picture; a woman’s form, heroic, bearing a great sword, with wide spread wings which are at the same time wings and American flags; before her the bent and cowering form of the Emperor; while beyond, a sea of khaki, illimitable hosts of warriors melting away in waves against the horizon; and underneath the words:
“But what tremendous fleet could have brought hither such an army?”
“The Lusitania.”
The Patisserie shops are full of enticing little cakes once more; but, sad to say, the quality one finds has depreciated while the prices have gone sky-rocketing. I thought I would economise this noon and, instead of eating a five franc luncheon at the hotel, substitute a cup of cocoa and some little cakes at a tea-shop. When I came to pay my bill it was seven francs fifty! While I was partaking of my frugal repast a French Red Cross nurse came into the shop leading two blind poilus. She bought them each some cakes as if they had been two little boys and they stood there eating them. The poilu nearest me, a tall fine-looking fellow, tasted his, “Ah!” he exclaimed, “c’est une vrai Madeleine!” He lied. It was no more like a pre-war Madeleine than chalk is like cheese, but if it had been made of India-rubber I suppose he would have said the same thing, and said it with just the same grave and gracious courtesy.