this little Suzette, whose footsteps had gone dancing
through the streets of Paris. It was always like that when a Taube
came. That bird of death chose women and children as its prey, and
Paris cursed the cowards who made war on their innocents.

But Paris was not afraid. The women did not stay indoors because
between one street and another they might be struck out of life,
without a second's warning. They glanced up to the sky and smiled
disdainfully. They were glad even that a Taube should come now and
then, so that they, the women of Paris, might run some risks in this
war and share its perils with their men, who every day in the trenches
la-bas, faced death for the sake of France. "Our chance of death is a
million to one," said some of them. "We should be poor things to take
fright at that!"

12

But there were other death-ships that might come sailing through the
sky on a fair night without wind or moon. The enemy tried to affright
the soul of Paris by warnings of the destruction coming to them with a
fleet of Zeppelins. But Paris scoffed. "Je m'en fiche de vos
Zeppelins!" said the spirit of Paris. As the weeks passed by and the
months, and still no Zeppelins came, the menace became a jest. The
very word of Zeppelin was heard with hilarity. There were comic
articles in the newspapers, taunting the German Count who had
made those gas-bags. There were also serious articles proving the
impossibility of a raid by airships. They would be chased by French
aviators as soon as they were sighted. They would be like the
Spanish Armada, surrounded by the little English warships, pouring
shot and shell into their unwieldy hulks. Not one would escape down
the wind.

The police of Paris, more nervous than the public, devised a system
of signals if Zeppelins were sighted. There were to be bugle-calls
throughout the city, and the message they gave would mean "lights
out!" in every part of Paris. For several nights there were rehearsals
of darkness, without the bugle-calls, and the city was plunged into
abysmal gloom, through which people who had been dining in
restaurants lost themselves in familiar streets and groped their way
with little shouts of laughter as they bumped into substantial shadows.

Paris enjoyed the adventure, the thrill of romance in the mystery of
darkness, the weird beauty of it. The Tuileries gardens, without a
single light except the faint gleams of star-dust, was an enchanted
place, with the whi