unded in palatial restaurants, hotels,
and private mansions; but the refinement, the grace, the brilliant
conversation even of the Paris of the Third Empire were seen to be
subtle branches of a lost art. The people of the armistice were weary
and apprehensive--weary of the war, weary of politics, weary of the
worn-out framework of existence, and filled with a vague, nameless
apprehension of the unknown. They feared that in the chaotic slough into
which they had fallen they had not yet touched bottom. None the less,
with the exception of fervent Catholics and a number of earnest
sectarians, there were few genuine seekers after anything essentially
better.

Not only did the general atmosphere of Paris undergo radical changes,
together with its population, but the thoroughfares, many of them,
officially changed their names since the outbreak of the war.

The Paris of the Conference ceased to be the capital of France. It
became a vast cosmopolitan caravanserai teeming with unwonted aspects of
life and turmoil, filled with curious samples of the races, tribes, and
tongues of four continents who came to watch and wait for the mysterious
to-morrow. The intensity of life there was sheer oppressive; to the
tumultuous striving of the living were added the silent influences of
the dead. For it was also a trysting-place for the ghosts of
sovereignties and states, militarisms and racial ambitions, which were
permitted to wander at large until their brief twilight should be
swallowed up in night. The dignified Turk passionately pleaded for
Constantinople, and cast an imploring look on the lone Armenian whose
relatives he had massacred, and who was then waiting for political
resurrection. Persian delegates wandered about like souls in pain,
waiting to be admitted through the portals of the Conference Paradise.
Beggared Croesus passed famishing Lucullus in the street, and once
mighty viziers shivered under threadbare garments in the biting frost as
they hurried over the crisp February snow. Waning and waxing Powers,
vacant thrones, decaying dominations had, each of them, their accusers,
special pleaders, and judges, in this multitudinous world-center on
which tragedy, romance, and comedy rained down potent spells. For the
Conference city was also the clearing-house of the Fates, where the
accounts of a whole epoch, the deeds and misdeeds of an exhausted
civilization, were to be balanced and squared.

Here strange yet familiar figure