I climbed up through narrow, cobblestoned streets to the higher part of
the town. It was pleasant up here in the frosty morning--old houses,
archways, and courts, and the bells tolling people to church.

Up the long hill, as I went down, came three hearses in black and
silver, after the French fashion, with drivers in black coats and
black-and-silver cocked hats. People stopped as they passed, a woman
crossed herself, men took off their hats--farther up the hill a French
sentry suddenly straightened and presented arms.

The three caskets were draped in flags--not the tricolor, but the Union
Jack. No mourners followed them, and as the ancient vehicles climbed
over the brow of the hill the people kept looking, feeling, perhaps,
that something was lacking, wondering who the strangers might be who had
given their lives to France.

Monday.

Paris again--a gray Paris, with bare tree-trunks, dead leaves on the
sidewalk, and in the air the chill of approaching winter.

Across the gray distances one fancies now and then to have seen the
first stray flakes of snow, and in some old street, between tall, gray
houses leaning backward, sidewise, each after its fashion--as some girl,
pale, with shawl wrapped about her shoulders, hurries past with a quick
upcasting of dark eyes, one thinks of Mimi and the third act of "La
Boheme."

Old sentiments, old songs and verses return in this strange, gray