burning eyes.


6


It was strange how in a day all gold disappeared from Paris. I could
not see the glint of it anywhere, unless I drew it from my own purse.
Even silver was very scarce and everybody was trying to cash notes,
which were refused by the shopkeepers. When I put one of them
down on a table at the Café Tourtel the waiter shook his head and
said, "La petite monnaie, s'il vous plaît!" At another place where I put
down a gold piece the waiter seized it as though it were a rare and
wonderful thing, and then gave me all my change in paper, made up
of new five franc notes issued by the Government. In the evening an
official notice was posted on the walls prohibiting the export of grain
and flour. People stared at it and said, "That means war!" Another
sign of coming events, more impressive to the imagination of the
Parisian, was the sudden dwindling in size of the evening
newspapers. They were reduced to two sheets, and in some cases to
a single broadside, owing to the possibility of a famine in paper if war
broke out and cut off the supplies of Paris while the railways were
being used for the mobilization of troops.


7


The city was very quiet and outwardly as calm as on any day in
August. But beneath this normal appearance of things there was a