reads about--it was a picture from some fanciful story of Mr. H. G.
Wells. They scattered for the arcades, and some, quaintly enough, ran
under the trees in the near-by Champs-Elysées. There was a "Bang!" at
which everybody shouted "There!" but it was not a bomb, only part of the
absurd fusillade that now began. They were firing from the Eiffel
Tower, whence they might possibly have hit something, and from roofs
with ordinary guns and revolvers which could not possibly have hit
anything at all. In the gray haze that hung over Paris the next
morning, I wandered through empty streets and finally, with some vague
notion of looking out, up the hill of Montmartre. All Paris lay below,
mysterious in the mist, with that strange, poignant beauty of something
trembling on the verge. One could follow the line of the Seine and see
the dome of the Invalides, but nothing beyond. I went down a little way
from the summit and, still on the hill, turned into the Rue des
Abbesses, crowded with vegetable carts and thrifty housewives. The gray
air was filled with their bargaining, with the smell of vegetables and
fruit, and there, in front of two men playing violins, a girl in black,
with a white handkerchief loosely knotted about her throat, was singing
of the little Alsatian boy, shot by the Prussians because he cried "Vive
la France!" and threatened them with his wooden gun.

True or not, it was one of those things that get believed. Verses were
written about it and pictures made of it all over Paris--presently it
would be history. And this girl, true child of the asphalt, was
flinging it at them, holding the hearts of these broad-faced mothers in
the hollow of her hand. She would sing one verse, pause, and sell
copies of the song, then put a hand to her hoarse throat and sing again.
The music was not sold with the song, and it was rather difficult--a
mournful sort of recitative with sudden shifts into marching rhythm--and
so the people sang the words over and over with her until they had