The life of Paris was being drained of its best blood by this vampire, war.  In the Latin Quarter most of the students went without any preliminary demonstrations in the cafe d’Harcourt, or speeches from the table-tops in the cheaper restaurants along the Boul’ Miche, where in times of peace any political crisis or intellectual drama produces a flood of fantastic oratory from young gentlemen with black hair, burning eyes, and dirty finger-nails.  They had gone away silently, with hasty kisses to little mistresses, who sobbed their hearts out for a night before searching for any lovers who might be left.

In all the streets of Paris there was a shutting up of shops.  Every day put a new row of iron curtains between the window panes, until at the end of the twelfth day the city seemed as dismal as London on a Sunday, or as though all the shops were closed for a public funeral.  Scraps of paper were pasted on the barred-up fronts.

“Le magasin est ferme a cause de la mobilisation.” 
“M.  Jean Cochin et quatre fils sont au front des armees.” 
“Tout le personel de cet etablissement est mobilise.”

A personal incident brought the significance of the general mobilization sharply to my mind.  I had not realized till then how completely the business of Paris would be brought to a standstill, and how utterly things would be changed.  Before leaving Paris for Nancy and the eastern frontier, I left a portmanteau and a rug in a hotel where I had become friendly with the manager and the assistant manager, with the hall porter, the liftman, and the valet de chambre.  I had discussed the war with each of these men and from each of them had heard the same expressions of horror and dismay.  The hall porter was a good-humoured soul, who confided to me that he had a pretty wife and a new-born babe, who reconciled him to the disagreeable side of a life as the servant of any stranger who might come to the hotel with a bad temper and a light purse...

On coming back from Nancy I went to reclaim my bag and rug.  But when I entered the hotel something seemed different.  At first I could not quite understand this difference.  It seemed to me for a moment that I had come to the wrong place.  I did not see the hotel porter nor the manager and assistant manager.  There was only a sharp-featured lady sitting at the desk in loneliness, and she looked at me, as I stared round the hall, with obvious suspicion.  Very politely I asked for my bag and rug, but the lady’s air became more frigid when I explained that I had lost the cloak-room ticket and could not remember the number of the room I had occupied a few days before.

“Perhaps there is some means by which you could prove that you stayed here?” said the lady.

“Certainly.  I remember the hall porter.  His name is Pierre, and he comes from the Midi.”

She shook her head.

“There is no hall porter, Monsieur.  He has gone.”

“And then the valet de chambre.  His name is Francois.  He has curly hair and a short brown moustache.”