eights of the
Trocadero into Dido's Carthage, never, above all, so rich a moon
ripened through such perfect evenings. The Seine itself had no small
share in this mysterious increase of the city's beauty. Released
from all traffic, its hurried ripples smoothed themselves into long
silken reaches in which quays and monuments at last saw their
unbroken images. At night the fire-fly lights of the boats had
vanished, and the reflections of the street lamps were lengthened
into streamers of red and gold and purple that slept on the calm
current like fluted water-weeds. Then the moon rose and took
possession of the city, purifying it of all accidents, calming and
enlarging it and giving it back its ideal lines of strength and
repose. There was something strangely moving in this new Paris of
the August evenings, so exposed yet so serene, as though her very
beauty shielded her.

So, gradually, we fell into the habit of living under martial law.
After the first days of flustered adjustment the personal
inconveniences were so few that one felt almost ashamed of their not
being more, of not being called on to contribute some greater
sacrifice of comfort to the Cause. Within the first week over two
thirds of the shops had closed--the greater number bearing on their
shuttered windows the notice "Pour cause de mobilisation," which
showed that the "patron" and staff were at the front. But enough
remained open to satisfy every ordinary want, and the closing of the
others served to prove how much one could do without. Provisions
were as cheap and plentiful as ever, though for a while it was
easier to buy food than to have it cooked. The restaurants were
closing rapidly, and one often had to wander a long way for a meal,
and wait a longer time to get it. A few hotels still carried on a
halting life, galvanized by an occasional inrush of travel from
Belgium and Germany; but most of them had closed or were being
hastily transformed into hospitals.

The signs over these hotel doors first disturbed the dreaming
harmony of Paris. In a night, as it seemed, the whole city was hung
with Red Crosses. Every other building showed the red and white band
across its front, with "Ouvroir" or "Hopital" beneath; there
was something sinister in these preparations for horrors in which
one could not yet believe, in the making of bandages for limbs yet
sound and whole, the spreading of pillows for heads yet carried
high. But insist as they would on the wo