s.

Into the streets of Paris, therefore, came the convalescents and the
lightly wounded, and one-armed or one-legged officers or simple
poilus with bandaged heads and hands could be seen in any
restaurant among comrades who had not yet received their baptism
of fire, had not cried "Touche!" after the bursting of a German shell.

It was worth while to spend an evening, and a louis, at Maxim's, or at
Henry's, to see the company that came to dine there when the
German army was still entrenched within sixty miles of Paris. They
were not crowded, those places of old delight, and the gaiety had
gone from them, like the laughter of fair women who have passed
beyond the river. But through the swing doors came two by two, or in
little groups, enough people to rob these lighted rooms of loneliness.
Often it was the woman who led the man, lending him the strength of
her arm. Yet when he sat at table--this young officer of the Chasseurs
in sky-blue jacket, or this wounded Dragoon with a golden casque
and long horse-hair tail--hiding an empty sleeve against the woman's
side, or concealing the loss of a leg beneath the table cloth, it was
wonderful to see the smile that lit up his face and the absence of all
pain in it.

"Ah! comme il fait bon!"

I heard the sigh and the words come from one of these soldiers--not
an officer but a fine gentleman in his private's uniform--as he looked
round the room and let his brown eyes linger on the candle-lights and
the twinkling glasses and snow-white table-cloths. Out of the mud and
blood of the trenches, with only the loss of an arm or a leg, he had
come back to this sanctuary of civilization from which ugliness is
banished and all grim realities.

So, for this reason, other soldiers came on brief trips to Paris from the
front. They desired to taste the fine flavour of civilization in its ultra-
refinement, to dine delicately, to have the fragrance of flowers about
them, to sit in the glamour of shaded lights, to watch a woman's
beauty through the haze of cigarette-smoke, and to listen to the
music of her voice. There was always a woman by the soldier's side,
propping her chin in her hands and smiling into the depths of his
eyes. For the soul of a Frenchman demands the help of women, and
the love of women, however strong his courage or his self-reliance.
The beauty of life is to him a feminine thing, holding the spirit of
motherhood, romantic love and comradeship more intimate and
tender