stillness--that spirit so gracious, delicate, penetrating, and personal,
which has drawn so many through the years, becomes more moving and real.
There is more animation in the streets now: shops are opening, cabs
tooting down the Avenue de l'Opera the greater part of the night; but
most of the house-fronts are still shuttered and still. Tourists,
pleasure-seekers, and the banalities they bring are gone--every thought
and energy is with the men fighting on that long line across the north.
It is a Paris of the French--of a France united as never before,
perhaps, purified by fire, ardent, resolute, defending her life and her
precious inheritance.



The Temporary Capital



Tuesday.

A journalist actually protests in print against the big loaves of coarse
bread, long as half a stick of cord-wood and almost as hard--remember
the almost carnivorous joy with which a Frenchman devours bread!--to
which the military government, at the beginning of the war, condemned
Paris.

The explanation was that rolls and fancy bread took too much time and
there were not enough bakers left to do the work--and inspectors see
that the law is obeyed, whether amiable bakers think they have time or
not. And people want light bread, curly rolls, "pain de fantaisie." All
very well for General Gallieni! says the journalist; he likes hard