Soldiers -- Fiction; War stories; World War, 1914-1918 -- Fiction
He asked a woman selling newspapers what the church's name was. “Mais,
Monsieur, c'est Saint Sulpice,” said the woman in a surprised tone.
Saint Sulpice. Manon's songs came to his head, and the sentimental
melancholy of eighteenth century Paris with its gambling houses in the
Palais Royal where people dishonored themselves in the presence of their
stern Catonian fathers, and its billets doux written at little gilt
tables, and its coaches lumbering in covered with mud from the provinces
through the Porte d'Orleans and the Porte de Versailles; the Paris of
Diderot and Voltaire and Jean-Jacques, with its muddy streets and its
ordinaries where one ate bisques and larded pullets and souffles; a
Paris full of mouldy gilt magnificence, full of pompous ennui of the
past and insane hope of the future.
He walked down a narrow, smoky street full of antique shops and old
bookshops and came out unexpectedly on the river opposite the statue of
Voltaire. The name on the corner was quai Malaquais. Andrews crossed and
looked down for a long time at the river. Opposite, behind a lace-work
of leafless trees, were the purplish roofs of the Louvre with their high
peaks and their ranks and ranks of chimneys; behind him the old houses
of the quai and the wing, topped by a balustrade with great grey stone
urns of a domed building of which he did not know the name. Barges were
coming upstream, the dense green water spuming under their blunt bows,
towed by a little black tugboat with its chimney bent back to pass under
the bridges. The tug gave a thin shrill whistle. Andrews started walking
downstream. He crossed by the bridge at the corner of the Louvre, turned
his back on the arch Napoleon built to receive the famous horses from
St. Marc's,--a pinkish pastry-like affair--and walked through the
Tuileries which were full of people strolling about or sitting in the
sun, of doll-like children and nursemaids with elaborate white caps, of
fluffy little dogs straining at the ends of leashes. Suddenly a peaceful
sleepiness came over him. He sat down in the sun on a bench, watching,
hardly seeing them, the people who passed to and fro casting long
shadows. Voices and laughter came very softly to his ears above the
distant stridency of traffic. From far away he heard for a few moments
notes of a military band playing a march. The shadows of the trees
were faint blue-grey in the ruddy yellow gravel. Shadows of people kept
passing and repassing across them. He felt very languid and happy.
Suddenly he started up; he had been dozing. He asked an old man with a
beautifully pointed white beard the way to rue du Faubourg St. Honore.
After losing his way a couple of times, he walked listlessly up some
marble steps where a great many men in khaki were talking. Leaning
against the doorpost was Walters. As he drew near Andrews heard him
saying to the man next to him:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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