Ah, let me still tell of my country's smile in her sorrow—so sweet, and which is such a comfort to my heart. I have so much to tell that is horrible.
Another time I conducted a celebrated visitor to a "tirailleur" (a part of the colonial infantry who leave the ranks in action and fight individually). This "tirailleur" had had his right arm amputated. I said, "he is an Algerian." The wounded man looked at me reproachfully with his great soft eyes, saying: "Don't say Algerian, madame, me French, me give arm for France."
Another time I was with another Algerian; this one was about to die; nothing could save him. I was trying to soften his agony. He let me go on awhile, then suddenly stopped me with the melancholy childish accent of the Arabs, saying: "Don't bother about me any more, madame. All over. Me dead in two hours. Me just as happy as if get well. Thee write my mother that." I wrote his mother. She replied: "He has served France well. Allah has taken him to his breast."
IV—"WHAT I HAVE SEEN IN PARIS"
What I have seen! I have seen Paris under the Teutonic shadow cast from the north. Three days, on opening my windows at dawn, I anxiously listened for the expected rumble of the cannonading. Nothing.... It will be soon, this evening, to-morrow, I said. Everything in my threatened city became sacred to me. For me to die, that was nothing. But for Paris to be destroyed; my Paris! the city that cannot be described; cannot be explained! I couldn't stand that. I burst out weeping in the deserted streets, leaning perchance against a humble and old house. This mere relic had feelings, regrets, like the most sublime monuments.
The gravest day dawned. Those who only stayed in Paris for the pleasure they receive from it, and those who have children to take care of, were hastening toward the stations or crowding into automobiles. I stayed there. My heart wrung with agony, I drifted through my ordinary occupations. Then the unbelievable happened. As I was crossing the Place de la Madeleine, in a semi-dazed condition, a little boy, about five or six years old, ran up to me and gave me a slip of paper. I saw distractedly that he was decently dressed and had large blue eyes. I automatically opened the paper. The following unheard of phrase was typewritten on it: "France is invincible."
I turned toward the child: "Who gave you that?"
"Madame," said the little one, raising his head with a look that was grand, immense, "We wrote them ourselves, all night." Tears filled my eyes; I had a presentiment they were tears of deliverance. So, while we knew the Uhlans were in Chantilly, while in the hearts of the grown-up people horror placed its claws on faith, on hope, there was a little child with immense blue eyes, who knew nothing, like the good shepherds, St. Genevieve and Joan of Arc, but who knew that "France was invincible" and who passed the night writing it.
Yes, the miracle that saved Paris was revealed to us. But there was another miracle, something imponderable, which was the soul of the little boy with his eyes of light—which is the soul of Paris.
Paris ... even during those hours did not lose its sweet disposition of smiling independence. And it was among the children that we found the most touching proofs. One day—at the hour when the German aviators were storming Paris with bombs—we called it our five o'clock taube—I went out with a friend near the Park Monceau. All the passers-by were walking with their noses in the air, as they already had got the habit of the visits of "the bad pigeons."