ying in their efforts to prevent
needless loss of life, and such work as was still done in the world
was performed almost entirely by them and by members of kindred
British Protestant societies. They wore a blue badge to distinguish
themselves, and were ordered about by every one. At the call of
"Anglais, Anglais!" some side-whiskered man would immediately run up
to obey the summons, and you could send him to get food from the Store
for you, and he would be only too pleased. They would also cook hot
dinners.

I walked through the Boulevard Montmartre, and at every step I took I
became more profoundly miserable. One had called Paris the pleasure
city, the fairest city in the world, in the days before the
Proclamation; for one found it vibrating with beauty and life. And now
assuredly it was supremely a city of pleasure, for there was no work
to be done at all. So no artist ever took any trouble now, since there
was neither payment nor fame attainable; and wonderful caricatures of
philanthropists scribbled on the pavement or elsewhere, or clever
ribald songs shrieking out of gramophones were the only reminder of
that past and beautiful Paris that I had known. There was a fatuous
and brutal expression on most of the faces, and the people seemed to
be too lazy to do anything except drink and fondle. Even the lunatics
attracted but little attention. There was a flying-machine man who was
determined, as he expressed it, "that it should not be said of the
human race that it never flew." Even the "Anglais" were tired of
helping him with his machine, which he was quietly building on the
Place de l'Opera--a mass of intricate wires, bamboos, and paper boxes;
and the inventor himself frequently got lost as he climbed cheerily
among the rigging.

Weary of all this, I slept, alone, in one of the public beds, and
early next morning I clambered up the sacred slope of the Butte to see
the sunrise. The great silence of early morning was over the town, a
deathly and unnatural stillness. As I stood leaning over the parapet,
thinking miserably, a young man came up the hill slowly yet
gracefully, so that it was a pleasure to look at him. His face was sad
and noble, and as I had never thought to see nobility again, I hoped
he would be a friend to me. However, he turned himself almost roughly,
and said:

"Why have you come here?"

"To look at the fallen city I loved long ago," I replied, with
careless sorrow.

"Have you then also read