o disturb.

The mothers returned to fetch their children. The old ladies and
Monsieur Leddin were aroused.

"_C'est fini_! _Ah_!"

And in the courtyard one could hear them calling as they dispersed.

"Good-night, Madame Cocard."

"Good-night, Madame Bidon."

"Don't forget."

"I won't."

"Till next time."

"That's it, till next time."

A young woman approached me.

"Madame, you won't mind if I come after them to-morrow, would you?" she
begged with big wistful eyes. "The stairway is so dark and so narrow
in our house, I'm afraid something might happen to them."

"Mercy me! you're surely not thinking of leaving your babies alone in
the cellar?"

"Oh, Madame, it's not my babies. Not yet," and she smiled. "It's my
bronze chimney ornaments!"

"Your what?"

"Yes, Madame, my chimney ornaments. A clock and a pair of
candlesticks. They're over there in that wooden box all done up
beautifully. You see Lucien and I got married after the war began. It
was all done so quickly that I didn't have any trousseau or wedding
presents. I'm earning quite a good deal now, and I don't want him to
think ill of me so I'm furnishing the house, little by little. It's a
surprise for when he comes home."

"He's at the front?"

"No, Madame, in the hospital. He has a bad face wound. My, how it
worried him. He wanted to die, he used to be so handsome! See, here's
his photograph. He isn't too awfully ugly, is he? Anyway I don't love
him a bit less; quite the contrary, and that's one of the very reasons
why I want to fix things up--so as to prove it to him!"

VII

The Moulin Rouge no longer turns. The strains of sounding brass and
tinkling cymbal which once issued incessantly from every open cafe, and
together with the street cries, the tram bells and the motor horns of
the Boulevards Exterieurs, formed a gigantic characteristic medley,
have long since died away. The night restaurants are now turned into
workrooms and popular soup kitchens. Montmartre, the heart of Paris,
as it used to be called, Montmartre the care-free, has become drawn and
wizened as a winter apple, and at present strangely resembles a little
provincial city.

If it were true that "There is no greater sorrow than recalling happy
times when in misery," doubtless from France would rise but one long
forlorn wail. The stoic Parisian _poilu_, however, has completely
reversed such philosophy, and unmindful of the change his absence has