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A Volunteer Poilu by Henry Beston
page 24 of 155 (15%)
him down again with his staff.

Soldiers walked in the garden,--permissionnaires (men on furlough) out
for an airing with their rejoicing families, smart young English
subalterns, and rosy-fleshed, golden-haired Flemings of the type that
Rubens drew. But neither their presence nor the sight of an occasional
mutilé (soldier who has lost a limb), pathetically clumsy on his new
crutches, quite sent home the presence of the war. The normal life of
the city was powerful enough to engulf the disturbance, the theaters
were open, there were the same crowds on the boulevards, and the same
gossipy spectators in the sidewalk cafés. After a year of war the
Parisians were accustomed to soldiers, cripples, and people in mourning.
The strongest effect of the war was more subtle of definition, it was a
change in the temper of the city. Since the outbreak of the war, the
sham Paris that was "Gay Paree" had disappeared, and the real Paris, the
Paris of tragic memories and great men, had taken its place. An old
Parisian explained the change to me in saying, "Paris has become more
French." Deprived of the foreigner, the city adapted itself to a taste
more Gallic; faced with the realities of war, it exchanged its
artificiality for that sober reasonableness which is the normal attitude
of the nation.

At noon I left the garden and strolled down the Champs Élysées to the
Porte Maillot. The great salesrooms of the German motor-car dealers had
been given by the Government to a number of military charities who had
covered the trade signs with swathes and rosettes of their national
colors. Under the banner of the Belgians, in the quondam hop of the
Mercedes, was an exhibition of leather knickknacks, baskets, and dolls
made by the blind and mutilated soldiers. The articles--children's toys
for the most part, dwarfs that rolled over and over on a set of parallel
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