balmy November weather, this afterglow of summer which in
my own country we call Indian summer, had started new blossoms among
the climbing tea-roses, lovely orange-tinted blossoms, and some of a
clear lemon color, and their fragrance filled the air. Nowhere do
roses blow as they blow near the sea, nowhere have I breathed such
perfume as I breathed that drowsy afternoon in Paradise, where in
every door-yard thickets of clove-scented pinks carpeted the ground
and tall spikes of snowy phlox glimmered silver-white in the
demi-light.

Where on earth could a more peaceful scene be found than in this
sea-lulled land, here in the subdued light under aged, spreading oaks,
where moss crept over the pavements and covered the little fountain as
though it had been the stony brink of a limpid forest spring?

The mayor woke up toward five o'clock and stared at me with owlish
gravity as though daring me to say that he had been asleep.

"Um--ah--ma fois oui!" he muttered, blowing his nose loudly in a
purple silk bandanna. Then he shrugged his shoulders and added:
"C'est la vie, monsieur. Que voulez-vous?"

And it was one kind of life after all--a blessed release from the
fever of that fierce farandole which we of the outer world call
"life."

The mayor scratched his ear, yawned, stretched one leg, then the
other, and glanced at me.

"Paris still holds out?" he asked, with another yawn.

"Oh yes," I replied.

"And the war--is it still going badly for us?"

"There is always hope," I answered.

"Hope," he grumbled; "oh yes, we know what hope is--we of the coast
live on it when there's no bread; but hope never yet filled my belly
for me."

"Has the war touched you here in Paradise?" I asked.

"Touched us? Ho! Say it has crushed us and I'll strike palms with
you. Why, not a keel has passed out of the port since August. Where is
the fishing-fleet? Where are the sardine sloops that ought to have
sailed from Algiers? Where are the Icelanders?"

"Well, where are they?" I suggested.

"Where? Ask the semaphore yonder. Where are our salt schooners for
the Welsh coast? I don't know. They have not sailed, that's all I
know. You do well to come with your circus and your elephant! You can
peddle diamonds in the poor-house, too, if it suits your taste."

"Have the German cruisers frightened all your craft from the sea?" I
asked, astonished.

"Yes, partly. Then there's an ugly French cruiser lying off Groix,
yonder, and her black