han it used to be,
the real curtailment extended only to cheese, sugar, and butter. Our
bread-tickets brought us as much bread as we could reasonably expect.

One day, in the Rue de la Paix, I met a well-known English producer of
plays, and he piloted me to the Cafe de Paris, which seemed to have
lost nothing of its special atmosphere of smartness and costliness.
Louis the Rotund, who in the early days of the war went off to guard
bridges and gasometers, was playing his more accustomed role of _maitre
d'hotel_, explaining with suave gravity the unpreventable altitude of
prices. And for at least the tenth time he told me how in his young-man
soldiering days he came upon the spring whose waters have since become
world-famous.

Another night I ascended Montmartre, and dined under the volatile
guidance of Paul, who used to be a pillar of the Abbaye Theleme. Paul
came once to London, in the halcyon days of the Four Hundred Club, when
nothing disturbed him more than open windows and doors. "Keep the
guests dancing and the windows tight-closed, and you sell your
champagne," was his business motto. However, he was pleased to see me
again, and insisted on showing me his own particular way of serving
Cantelupe melon. Before scooping out each mouthful you inserted the
prongs of your fork into a lemon, and this lent the slightest of lemon
flavouring to the luscious sweetness of the melon.

America seemed to be in full possession of the restaurant and boulevard
life of Paris during those August days. Young American officers, with
plenty of money to spend, were everywhere. "You see," a Parisienne
explained, "before the war the Americans we had seen had been mostly
rich, middle-aged, business men. But when the American officers came,
Paris found that they were many, that many of them were young as well
as well-off, and that many of them were well-off, young, and
good-looking. It is quite _chic_ to lunch or dine with an American
officer."

The Americans carried out their propaganda in their usual thorough,
enthusiastic fashion. I was taken to the Elysee Palace Hotel, where I
found experienced publicists and numbers of charming well-bred women
busy preparing information for the newspapers, and arranging public
entertainments and sight-seeing tours for American troops in Paris, all
with the idea of emphasising that Americans were now pouring into
France in thousands. One night a smiling grey-haired lady stopped
before a table where