"Madame, you won't mind if I come after them to-morrow, would you?" she begged with big wistful eyes. "The stairway is so dark and so narrow in our house, I'm afraid something might happen to them." "Mercy me! you're surely not thinking of leaving your babies alone in the cellar?" "Oh, Madame, it's not my babies. Not yet," and she smiled. "It's my bronze chimney ornaments!" "Your what?" "Yes, Madame, my chimney ornaments. A clock and a pair of candlesticks. They're over there in that wooden box all done up beautifully. You see Lucien and I got married after the war began. It was all done so quickly that I didn't have any trousseau or wedding presents. I'm earning quite a good deal now, and I don't want him to think ill of me so I'm furnishing the house, little by little. It's a surprise for when he comes home." "He's at the front?" "No, Madame, in the hospital. He has a bad face wound. My, how it worried him. He wanted to die, he used to be so handsome! See, here's his photograph. He isn't too awfully ugly, is he? Anyway I don't love him a bit less; quite the contrary, and that's one of the very reasons why I want to fix things up--so as to prove it to him!" VII The Moulin Rouge no longer turns. The strains of sounding brass and tinkling cymbal which once issued incessantly from every open cafe, and together with the street cries, the tram bells and the motor horns of the Boulevards Exterieurs, formed a gigantic characteristic medley, have long since died away. The night restaurants are now turned into workrooms and popular soup kitchens. Montmartre, the heart of Paris, as it used to be called, Montmartre the care-free, has become drawn and wizened as a winter apple, and at present strangely resembles a little provincial city. If it were true that "There is no greater sorrow than recalling happy times when in misery," doubtless from France would rise but one long forlorn wail. The stoic Parisian _poilu_, however, has completely reversed such philosophy, and unmindful of the change his absence has created, delights in the remembrance of every instant, dreams but of the moment when he shall again be part of the light-hearted throngs who composed the society of the Butte. Time and again I have seen heavy army trucks lumbering down the avenue, bearing in huge chalk letters on either side of the awning-covered sides, such inscriptions as--_Bon jour, Montmartre. A bientot la Cigale--Greetings from the Front_--and like nonsense, denoting not only a homesick heart, but a delicate attention towards a well beloved.