ots of land,
women stooped over their cabbages, and old men tended the fruits of
the earth. On one patch a peasant girl stood with her hands on her
hips staring at her fowls, which were struggling and clucking for the
grain she had flung down to them. There was a smile about her lips.
She seemed absorbed in the contemplation of the feathered crowd.
Did she know the Germans were coming to Paris? If so, she was not
afraid.

How quiet it was in the great city! How strangely and deadly quiet!
The heels of my two companions, and my own, made a click-clack
down the pavements, as though we were walking through silent halls.
Could this be Paris--this city of shuttered shops and barred windows
and deserted avenues? There were no treasures displayed in the
Rue de la Paix. Not a diamond glinted behind the window panes.
Indeed, there were no windows visible, but only iron sheeting, drawn
down like the lids of dead men's eyes.

In the Avenue de l'Opera no Teutonic tout approached us with the old
familiar words, "Want a guide, sir?" "Lovely ladies, sir!" The lovely
ladies had gone. The guides had gone. Life had gone out of Paris.

It was early in the morning, and we were faint for lack of sleep and
food.

"My kingdom for a carriage," said the Philosopher, in a voice that
seemed to come from the virgin forests of the Madeira in which he
had once lost hold of all familiar things in life, as now in Paris.

A very old cab crawled into view, with a knock-kneed horse which
staggered aimlessly about the empty streets, and with an old cocher
who looked about him as though doubtful as to his whereabouts in
this deserted city.

He started violently when we hailed him, and stared at us as
nightmare creatures in a bad dream after an absinthe orgy. I had to
repeat an address three times before he understood.

"Hotel St. James... Ecoutez donc, mon vieux!"

He clacked his whip with an awakening to life.

"Allez!" he shouted to his bag of bones.

Our arrival at the Hotel St. James was a sensation, not without alarm.
I believe the concierge and his wife believed the Germans had come
when they heard the outrageous noise of our horse's hoofs
thundering into the awful silence of their courtyard. The manager, and
the assistant manager, and the head waiter, and the head waiter's
wife, and the chambermaid, and the cook, greeted us with the
surprise of people who behold an apparition.

"The hotel has shut up. Everybody has fled! We are quite