fluttering back or resting on their way to and from the Riviera, Switzerland, New York, and London. The Opéra Comique gave several performances of familiar operas each week, rendered patriotic by the recitation of the _Marseillaise_ by Madame Chenal clothed in the national colors with a mighty Roman sword with which to emphasize "_Aux armes, citoyens!_" The Française also was open several times a week and some of the smaller theaters as well as the omnipresent cinema shows, advertising reels fresh from the front by special permission of the general staff. The cafés along the boulevards did a fair business every afternoon, but there was a striking absence of uniforms in them owing to the strict enforcement of the posted regulations against selling liquor to soldiers. That and the peremptory closing of cafés and restaurants at ten-thirty reminded the stranger that Paris was still an "entrenched camp" under military law with General Gallieni as governor.... The number of women one saw at the cafés, sitting listlessly about the little tables, usually without male companions, indicated one of the minor miseries of the great war. For the _midinette_ and the _femme galante_ there seemed nothing to do. A paternal government had found occupation and pay for all other classes of women, also a franc and a half a day for the soldier's wife or mother, but the daughter of joy was left very joyless indeed, with the cold misery of a room from which she could not be evicted "_pendant la guerre._" They haunted the cafés, the boulevards,--ominous, pitiful specters of the manless world the war was making. Hucksters' carts lined the side streets about the Marché Saint-Honoré as usual, and I could not see that prices of food had risen abnormally in spite of complaints in the newspapers and the discussion about cold storage in the Chamber of Deputies. Restaurant portions were parsimonious and prices high as usual, but the hotels made specially low rates, "_pendant la guerre,_" which the English took advantage of in large numbers. The Latin Quarter seemed harder hit by the war than other quarters, emptier, as at the end of a long vacation; around the Arch there was a subdued movement as between seasons. The people were there, but did not show themselves. One went to a simple dinner _à la guerre_ at an early hour. All, even purely fashionable persons, were too much occupied by grave realities and duties to make an effort for forms and ceremonies. Life suddenly had become terribly uncomplex, even for the sophisticated. In these surface ways living in Paris was like going back a century or so to a society much less highly geared than the one we are accustomed to. I liked it. * * * * *