The End: How the Great War Was Stopped. A Novelistic Vagary

by L. P. Gratacap

We attended the session of the Chamber of Deputies. It was inspiring. The English and Russian ambassadors sat together, and the Chamber awaited the proceedings in complete silence. A tribute to the dead socialist Jaures was delivered by M. Paul Deschanel. It was eloquent, and the resounding shout that greeted the declaration that with France "there are no more adversaries; there are only Frenchmen," thrilled everyone present by its vociferous unanimity. Then followed the speech of the Premier M. Viviani, who read his address, punctuated by repeated cries of "Vive la France," and when he concluded with the phrase, uttered in a tone of metallic defiance, "We are without reproach. We shall be without fear," the Chamber went mad, and the walls sent back the billows of sound, as the air above the heads of the deputies became white with waving handkerchiefs and papers.

Yvette was overcome with his feelings, and I led him from the room trembling with emotion.

The next day Yvette appeared greatly refreshed, and suggested almost jocosely that we should together "parcourir la ville." I gladly assented. I craved this intimacy with the dramatic incidents of the moment, and was only too anxious to record some vivid impression of the city under this terrifying menace. That was August sixth, and we walked or rode all of the day. At night Paris was silent and dark, the streets almost deserted, and the soldiery watchful.

The dressmakers and milliners on the Rue de la Paix—the irony of the name grimly diverted us—were almost all shut up, and the street was a long dull succession of iron shutters. We saw women on the street cars (tramways). Along the Boulevard des Capucines our eyes were astonished by a drove of a hundred cows being driven through that avenue; the papers were sold in immense numbers, and the lively trade in them brought boys, girls, women, and old men from the suburbs to share in the momentary activity. Everywhere we saw the momentous enthusiasm and determination of the people, and any appearance of troops entrained for the frontier started the wildest applause.

Paris has been for an instant stunned by the spell of a terrible apprehension, that quickly succumbed to a returning wave of excited, indignant, overwhelming patriotism. I felt that the actual danger as a fear vanished in the tremendous reaction of rage and resolution. Its industries are crippled, its hilarity suppressed, and the many hued veil of joy and enjoyment that enveloped it like a cloud, has been torn aside, only to reveal the underlying hardihood and substance of manhood and devotion.

It looked finely, but I could not now shake off the terror of my mind over the Germanic rush onward. I intuitively felt that their devastating passage southward from Belgium would stretch far into France, and if arrested at all must be parried or flung back by the concentrated energy of the French and English armies, before its irresistible massiveness assumed such proportions as to become immovable and impregnable. I began to fear for St. Choiseul, and was anxious to return. M. Yvette pressed me to remain a few days longer, and as I had despatched all of my commissions—papers to Privat Deschat, and pictures to the captain, and letters every day to Gabrielle and Père Antoine—I assented.

Each succeeding day manifested the overturn in the domestic and routine days of the great city. The morning breakfast rolls had gone because the bakers are with the army, and families are supplied only with boulot and demi-fendu, but the supply is irregular, and the girls go after both the bread and the milk. In a hundred ways the national emergency is felt in the family, apart from the departure of sons, and the even retinue of service has been disarranged, with amusing consequences. Lines were formed before the provision shops in the mornings.

On August eighth good news was received, and the quickly revived spirits of the city became apparent in the crowded streets, with a noticeable resumption of gayety. I went to church, leaving the Yvettes home. The church was filled to repletion, and there was a large proportion of men. The service was well rendered, and the preacher touched upon the one thing uppermost in all minds, and admonished faith, courage, and prayer. As the congregation emerged from the portals of the church, the Marseillaise was heard from a near-by street, and, like a spark conveyed to combustibles, the surging mass broke out with song. It was a convulsion of fervor that made one almost quail before its immense intensity.

I took my leave of the Yvettes, who had been charmingly pleasant to me in their great home, and where the enormous sadness was sensibly softened by their amiability and courage. That was August fifteenth. The morning was dark with heavy thunderstorms, and the rain fell continuously. In the large dining room of the Yvettes, we gathered at a late breakfast—une affaire de semi-cuisine à midi—and, as the chandeliers were lighted and candles graced the side-board, and the mantel, and the high square étagères, it took on the expression of an "occasion." M. Yvette said it was my valedictory. I hardly knew what he meant, but this I know, that that was the last time I saw Yvette, or any of his splendid family. Yvette died at Bordeaux after the official evacuation of Paris; his two boys were killed at the battle of the Marne, and then the widow and the unmarried daughters left the mansion in the Avenue de l'Alma and lived with Madame Aubray, the married daughter. I have never seen any of them since.

We all tried to be cheerful, but the incessant marching of troops in the city during the last three days occurred to some of us as ominous of the encroaching and steadily moving Teuton. The conversation was most disingenuous, touching upon almost anything but the immediate preoccupations of our minds, and the apparent social abandon masked the uneasy sense of danger. The only remark that related to the war was one by myself, to the purpose that the superbly furnished table offered no suggestions of the possibility of Paris being starved—which perhaps under the circumstances was a little maladroit—and the story that Madame Aubray repeated, that a Prussian officer speaking French perfectly, among a group of prisoners at Versailles, met some French reservists, who passed the convoy singing the Marseillaise, and he turned to his guard and quickly remarked, "What a disillusion awaits us!"