Monday.

Paris again—­a gray Paris, with bare tree-trunks, dead leaves on the sidewalk, and in the air the chill of approaching winter.

Across the gray distances one fancies now and then to have seen the first stray flakes of snow, and in some old street, between tall, gray houses leaning backward, sidewise, each after its fashion—­as some girl, pale, with shawl wrapped about her shoulders, hurries past with a quick upcasting of dark eyes, one thinks of Mimi and the third act of “La Boheme.”

Old sentiments, old songs and verses return in this strange, gray stillness—­that spirit so gracious, delicate, penetrating, and personal, which has drawn so many through the years, becomes more moving and real.  There is more animation in the streets now:  shops are opening, cabs tooting down the Avenue de l’Opera the greater part of the night; but most of the house-fronts are still shuttered and still.  Tourists, pleasure-seekers, and the banalities they bring are gone—­every thought and energy is with the men fighting on that long line across the north.  It is a Paris of the French—­of a France united as never before, perhaps, purified by fire, ardent, resolute, defending her life and her precious inheritance.

The Temporary Capital

Tuesday.

A journalist actually protests in print against the big loaves of coarse bread, long as half a stick of cord-wood and almost as hard—­remember the almost carnivorous joy with which a Frenchman devours bread!—­to which the military government, at the beginning of the war, condemned Paris.

The explanation was that rolls and fancy bread took too much time and there were not enough bakers left to do the work—­and inspectors see that the law is obeyed, whether amiable bakers think they have time or not.  And people want light bread, curly rolls, “pain de fantaisie.”  All very well for General Gallieni! says the journalist; he likes hard bread; but why must several million people go on cracking their teeth because of that idiosyncrasy?

The government is obdurate.  If fancy bread were made, only the big bakers would have time to make it, little ones would be without clients, and that this highly centralized, paternal government cannot allow.  Hard bread it is, then, for another while at least—­“C’est la guerre!”

Thursday.

We have a dining-car on our Bordeaux express to-day, the first since war was declared.  To-morrow night sleeping-cars go back again—­more significant than one might think who had not seen the France of a few months ago, when everything was turned over to the army and people sat up all night in day coaches to cover the usual three hours from Dieppe to Paris.