Chapter 5

I feel quite certain they never gave it a thought. Blissfully installed in their comfortable orchestra seats they didn't intend to miss a word of the entire performance. And when finally in an endless chain of verses, a comedian, mimicking a _poilu_ with his kit on his back, recited his vicissitudes with the army police, and got mixed up in his interpretation of R.A.T., G.Q.G.--etc., they burst into round after round of applause, calling and recalling their favourite, while their sides shook with laughter, and the tears rolled down their cheeks.

These same faces took on a nobly serious aspect, while a tall, pale, painted damsel draped in a peplum, evoked in ringing tones the glorious history of the tri-colour. I looked about me--many a manly countenance was wrinkled with emotion, and women on all sides sniffed audibly. It was then that I understood, as never before, what a philosopher friend calls "the force of symbols."

An exact scenic reproduction of the war would have shocked all those good people; just as this impossible theatrical deformation, this potpourri of songs, dances and orchestral tremolos charmed and delighted their care-saturated souls.

Little girls in Alsatian costume, and the eternally sublime Red Cross nurse played upon their sentimentality; the slacker inspired them with disgust; they shrieked with delight at the _nouveau riche_; and their enthusiasm knew no bounds when towards eleven-fifteen arrived the "Stars and Stripes" accompanied by a double sextette of khaki-coloured female ambulance drivers. Tradition has willed it thus.

If the war continue any length of time doubtless the United States will also become infuriated with the slacker, and I tremble to think of the special brand of justice that woman in particular will have in store for the man who does not really go to the front, or who, thanks to intrigue and a uniform, is spending his days in peace and safety.

Alas, there are _embusqués_ in all countries, just as there are _nouveaux-riches_. In Paris these latter are easily discernible. They have not yet had time to become accustomed to their new luxuries; especially the women, who wear exaggerated styles, and flaunt their furs and jewels, which deceive no one.

"They buy everything, so long as it is expensive," explained an antiquity dealer. "They want everything, and want it at once!"

The few old artisans still to be found who are versed in the art of repairing antiques, are rushed to death, and their ill humour is almost comic, for in spite of the fact that they are being well paid for their work, they cannot bear to see these precious treasures falling into the hands of the vulgar.

"This is for Mr. or Mrs. So-and-So," they inform you with an ironical smile, quite certain that you have never heard the name before.

It would almost seem as if a vast wave of prosperity had enveloped the country, were one to judge of the stories of millions made in a minute, fortunes sprung up over night, new factories erected where work never ceases; prices paid for real estate, monster strokes on the Bourse. Little wonder then that in May just past, with the Germans scarcely sixty miles from Paris, the sale of Degas' studio attained the extraordinary total of nearly two million dollars; an Ingres drawing which in 1889 brought eight hundred and fifty francs, selling for fourteen thousand, and a Greco portrait for which Degas himself gave four hundred and twenty francs in 1894, fetching eighty-two thousand francs.

Yes, such things happen even in France, and one hears but too often of fortunes accumulated in the past four years--but alas! how much more numerous are those which have been lost. The _nouveaux-pauvres_ far outnumber the _nouveaux-riches_; but these former seem to go into hiding.

The Parisian bourgeois was essentially a property owner. His delight was in houses; the stone-front six-story kind, the serious rent-paying proposition, containing ten or a dozen moderate-priced apartments, and two good stores, from which he derived a comfortable income. Such was the ultimate desire of the little shop-keeper, desire which spurred him on to sell and to economise.

A house, some French rentes, government bonds (chiefly Russian in recent years) and a few city obligations, were the extent of his investments, and formed not only the nucleus but the better part of many a French fortune.

Imagine then the predicament of such people under the moratorium. Few and far between are the tenants who have paid a sou of rent since August, 1914, and the landlord has no power to collect. Add to this the ever increasing price of living, and you will understand why many an elderly Parisian who counted on spending his declining years in peace and plenty, is now hard at work earning his daily bread.

Made in a moment of emergency, evidently with the intention that it be of short duration, this law about rentals has become the most perplexing question in the world. Several attempts have been made towards a solution, but all have remained fruitless, unsanctioned; and the property owners are becoming anxious.

That men who have been mobilised shall not pay--that goes without saying. But the others. How about them?

I happen to know a certain house in a bourgeois quarter of the city about which I have very special reasons for being well informed.

Both stores are closed. The one was occupied by a book-seller, the other by a boot-maker. Each dealer was called to the army, and both of them have been killed. Their estates will not be settled until after the war.

The first floor was rented to a middle-aged couple. The husband, professor in a city school, is now prisoner in Germany. His wife died during the Winter just passed.

On the second landing one entered the home of a cashier in a big National Bank. He was the proud possessor of a wife and three pretty babies. The husband, aged thirty-two, left for the front with the rank of Lieutenant, the first day of the mobilisation. His bank kindly consented to continue half salary during the war. The lieutenant was killed at Verdun. His employers offered a year and a half's pay to the young widow--that is to say, about six thousand dollars, which she immediately invested in five per cent government rentes. A lieutenant's yearly pension amounts to about three hundred dollars, and the Legion of Honour brings in fifty dollars per annum.

They had scarcely had time to put anything aside, and I doubt if he carried a life insurance. At any rate the education of these little boys will take something more than can be economised after the bare necessities of life have been provided. So how is the brave little woman even to think of paying four years' rent, which when computed would involve more than two-thirds of her capital?

The third floor tenant is an elderly lady who let herself be persuaded to put her entire income into bonds of the City of Vienna, Turkish debt, Russian roubles, and the like. I found her stewing up old newspapers in a greasy liquid, preparing thus a kind of briquette, the only means of heating which she could afford. Yet the prospect of a Winter without coal, possibly without bread, did not prevent her from welcoming me with a smile, and explaining her case with grace and distinction, which denoted the most exquisite breeding. Her maid, she apologised as she bowed me out, was ill of rheumatism contracted during the preceding Winter.

The top apartment was occupied by a government functionary and his family. As captain in the infantry he has been at the front since the very beginning. His wife's family are from Lille, and like most pre-nuptial arrangements when the father is in business, the daughter received but the income of her dowry, which joined to her husband's salary permitted a cheerful, pleasant home, and the prospect of an excellent education for the children.

The salary ceased with the Captain's departure to the front; the wife's income stopped when the Germans entered Lille a few weeks later. They now have but his officer's pay, approximately eighty dollars per month, as entire financial resource. Add to this the death of a mother and four splendid brothers, the constant menace of becoming a widow, and I feel certain that the case will give food for reflection.

All these unfortunate women know each other; have guessed their mutual misfortunes, though, of course, they never mention them. Gathered about a single open fire-place whose welcome blaze is the result of their united economy, they patiently ply their needles at whatever handiwork they are most deft, beading bags, making filet and mesh laces, needle-work tapestry and the like, utilising every spare moment, in the hope of adding another slice of bread to the already too frugal meals.

But orders are rare, and openings for such work almost nil. To obtain a market would demand business training which has not been part of their tradition, which while it tempts, both intimidates and revolts them. Certain desperate ones would branch out in spite of all--but they do not know how, dare not seem so bold.

And so Winter will come anew--Winter with bread and sugar rations at a maximum; Winter with meat prices soaring far above their humble pocket books.

Soup and vegetable stews quickly become the main article of diet. Each succeeding year the little mothers have grown paler, and more frail. The children have lost their fat, rosy cheeks. But let even a local success crown our arms, let the _communiqué_ bring a little bit of real news, tell of fresh laurels won, let even the faintest ray of hope for the great final triumph pierce this veil of anxiety--and every heart beat quickens, the smiles burst forth; lips tremble with emotion. These people know the price, and the privilege of being French, the glory of belonging to that holy nation.

V

When after a lengthy search our friends finally discover our Parisian residence, one of the first questions they put is, "Why on earth is your street so narrow?"

The reason is very simple. Merely because la rue Geoffrey L'Asnier was built before carriages were invented, the man who gave it its name having doubtless dwelt there during the fourteenth or fifteenth century, as one could easily infer after inspecting the choir of our parish church. But last Good Friday, the Germans in trying out their super-cannon, bombarded St. Gervais. The roof caved in, killing and wounding many innocent persons, and completely destroying that choir.

Elsewhere a panic might have ensued, but residents of our quarter are not so easily disturbed. The older persons distinctly recall the burning of the Hotel de Ville and the Archbishop's Palace in 1870. And did they not witness the battles in the streets, all the horrors of the Commune, after having experienced the agonies and privations of the Siege? I have no doubt that among them there are persons who were actually reduced to eating rats, and I feel quite certain that many a man used his gun to advantage from between the shutters of his own front window.

Their fathers had seen the barricades of 1848 and 1830, their grandfathers before them the Reign of Terror--and so on one might continue as far back as the Norman invasion.

The little café on the rue du Pont Louis-Philippe serves as meeting place for all the prophets and strategists of the quarter, who have no words sufficient to express their disdain for the Kaiser's heavy artillery.

"It's all bluff, they think they can frighten us! Why, I, Madame, I who am speaking to you--I saw the Hotel de Ville, the Theatre des Nations, the grain elevators, all in flames and all at once, the whole city seemed to be ablaze. Well, do you think that prevented the Parisians from fishing in the Seine, or made this café shut its doors? There was a barricade at either end of this street--the blinds were up and you could hear the bullets patter against them. The insurgents, all covered with powder, would sneak over and get a drink--and when finally their barricade was taken, it was the Republican soldiers who sat in our chairs and drank beer and lemonade! _Their_ guns, humph! Let them bark!"

It is at this selfsame café that gather all the important men of our district, much as the American would go to his club. They are serious _bourgeois_, well along in the fifties, just a trifle ridiculous, perhaps on account of their allure and their attire. But should one grow to know them better he would soon realise that most of them are shrewd, hard-working business men, each burdened with an anxiety or a sorrow which he never mentions.

They too love strategy. Armies represented by match safes, dominoes and toothpicks have become an obsession--their weakness. They are thorough Frenchmen and their critical sense must be unbridled. They love their ideas and their systems. They would doubtless not hesitate to advise Foch. Personally, if I were Foch, I should turn a deaf ear. But if I were a timid, vacillating, pessimistic spirit, still in doubt as to the final outcome, I should most certainly seat myself at a neighbouring table and listen to their conversation that I might come away imbued with a little of their patience, abnegation, and absolute confidence.

Nor does the feminine opinion deviate from this course. I found the same ideas prevalent in the store of a little woman who sold umbrellas. Before the war Madame Coutant had a very flourishing trade, but now her sales are few and far between, while her chief occupation is repairing. She is a widow without children, and no immediate relative in the war. Because of this, at the beginning she was looked down upon and her situation annoyed and embarrassed her greatly. But by dint of search, a most voluminous correspondence, and perhaps a little bit of intrigue, she finally managed to unearth two very distant cousins, peasant boys from the Cevennes, whom she frankly admitted never having seen, but to whom she regularly sent packages and post cards; about whom she was at liberty to speak without blushing, since one of them had recently been cited for bravery and decorated with the _Croix de Guerre_.

This good woman devotes all the leisure and energy her trade leaves her, to current events. Of course, there is the official _communiqué_ which may well be considered as the national health bulletin; but besides that, there is still another, quite as indispensable and fully as interesting, made up of the criticism of local happenings, and popular presumption.

This second _communiqué_ comes to us direct from Madame Coutant's, where a triumvirate composed of the scissors-grinder, the woman-who-rents-chairs-in-St.-Gervais, the sacristan's wife, the concierge of the Girls' School, and the widow of an office boy in the City Hall, get their heads together and dispense the news.

The concierges and cooks while out marketing, pick it up and start it on its rounds.

"We are progressing North of the Marne"; "Two million Americans have landed in France," and similar statements shall be accepted only when elucidated, enlarged and embellished by Madame Coutant's group. Each morning brings a fresh harvest of happenings, but each event is certified or contradicted by a statement from some one who is "Out there," and sees and knows.

Under such circumstances an attack in Champagne may be viewed from a very different angle when one hears that Bultot, the electrician, is telephone operator in that region; that the aforesaid Bultot has written to his wife in most ambiguous phraseology, and that she has brought the letter to Madame Coutant's for interpretation.

But it is more especially the local moral standards which play an important part and are subject to censorship in Madame Coutant's circle. The individual conduct of the entire quarter is under the most rigid observation. Lives must be pure as crystal, homes of glass. It were better to attempt to hide nothing.

That Monsieur L., the retired druggist, is in sad financial straits, there is not the slightest doubt; no one is duped by the fact that he is trying to put on a bold face under cover of war-time economy.

That the grocer walks with a stick and drags his leg on the ground to make people think he is only fit for the auxiliary service, deceives no one; his time will come, there is but to wait.

Let a woman appear with an unaccustomed furbelow, or a family of a workman that is earning a fat salary, eat two succulent dishes the same week, public opinion will quickly make evident its sentiments, and swiftly put things to rights.

The war must be won, and each one must play his part--do his bit, no matter how humble. The straight and narrow paths of virtue have been prescribed and there is no better guide than the fear of mutual criticism. That is one reason why personally I have never sought to ignore Madame Coutant's opinion.

It goes without saying that the good soul has attributed the participation of the United States in this war entirely to my efforts. And the nature of the advice that I am supposed to have given President Wilson would make an everlasting fortune for a humourist. But in spite of it all, I am proud to belong to them; proud of being an old resident in their quarter.

"Strictly serious people," was the opinion passed upon us by the sacristan's wife for the edification of my new housemaid.

It is a most interesting population to examine in detail, made up of honest, skilful Parisian artisans, _frondeurs_ at heart, jesting with everything, but terribly ticklish on the point of honour.

"They ask us to 'hold out'," exclaims the laundress of the rue de Jouy; "as if we'd ever done anything else all our lives!"

These people were capable of the prodigious. They have achieved the miraculous!

With the father gone to the front, his pay-roll evaporated, it was a case of stop and think. Of course, there was the "Separation fee," about twenty-five cents a day for the mother, ten cents for each child. The French private received but thirty cents _a month_ at the beginning of the war. The outlook was anything but cheerful, the possibility of making ends meet more than doubtful. So work it was--or rather, extra work. Eyes were turned towards the army as a means of livelihood. With so many millions mobilised, the necessity for shirts, underwear, uniforms, etc., became evident.

Three or four mothers grouped together and made application for three or four hundred shirts. The mornings were consecrated to house work, which must be done in spite of all, the children kept clean and the food well prepared. But from one o'clock until midnight much might be accomplished; and much was.

The ordinary budget for a woman of the working class consists in earning sufficient to feed, clothe, light and heat the family, besides supplying the soldier husband with tobacco and a monthly parcel of goodies. Even the children have felt the call, and after school, which lasts from eight until four, little girls whose legs must ache from dangling, sit patiently on chairs removing bastings, or sewing on buttons, while their equally tiny brothers run errands, or watch to see that the soup does not boil over.

Then when all is done, when with all one's heart one has laboured and paid everything and there remains just enough to send a money-order to the _poilu_, there is still a happiness held in reserve--a delight as keen as any one can feel in such times; i.e., the joy of knowing that the "Separation fee" has not been touched. It is a really and truly income; it is a dividend as sound as is the State! It has almost become a recompense.

What matter now the tears, the mortal anxieties that it may have cost? For once again, to quote the laundress of the rue de Jouy--

"Trials? Why, we'd have had them anyway, even if there hadn't been a war!"

In these times of strictest economy, it would perhaps be interesting to go deeper into the ways of those untiring thrifty ants who seem to know how "To cut a centime in four" and extract the quintessence from a bone. My concierge is a precious example for such a study, having discovered a way of bleaching clothes without boiling, and numerous recipes for reducing the high cost of living to almost nothing.

It was in her lodge that I was first introduced to a drink made from ash leaves, and then tasted another produced by mixing hops and violets, both to me being equally as palatable as certain brands of grape juice.

Butter, that unspeakable luxury, she had replaced by a savoury mixture of tried out fats from pork and beef kidney, seasoned with salt, pepper, allspice, thyme and laurel, into which at cooling was stirred a glass of milk. Not particularly palatable on bread but as a seasoning to vegetable soup, that mighty French stand-by, I found it most excellent. Believe me, I've tried it!

Jam has long been prepared with honey, and for all other sweetening purposes she used a syrup of figs that was not in the least disagreeable. The ration of one pound of sugar per person a month, and brown sugar at that, does not go very far.

The cold season is the chief preoccupation of all Parisians, and until one has spent a war winter in the capital he is incapable of realising what can be expected from a scuttle full of coal.

First of all, one commences by burning it for heating purposes, rejoicing in every second of its warmth and glow. One invites one's friends to such a gala! Naturally the coal dust has been left at the bottom of the recipient, the sack in which it was delivered is well shaken for stray bits, and this together with the sittings is mixed with potter's clay and sawdust, which latter has become a most appreciable possession in our day. The whole is then stirred together and made into bricks or balls, which though they burn slowly, burn surely.

The residue of this combustible is still so precious, that when gathered up, ground anew with paper and sawdust, and at length amalgamated with a mucilaginous water composed of soaked flax-seed, one finally obtains a kind of pulp that one tries vainly to make ignite, but which obstinately refuses to do so, though examples to the contrary have been heard of.

The fireless cooker has opened new horizons, for, of course, there is still enough gas to start the heating. But none but the wealthy can afford such extravagance, so each one has invented his own model. My concierge's husband is renowned for his ingenuity in this particular branch, and people from the other side of the Isle St. Louis, or the rue St. Antoine take the time to come and ask his advice. It seems to me he can make fireless cookers out of almost anything. Antiquated wood chests, hat boxes, and even top hats themselves have been utilised in his constructions.

"These are real savings-banks for heat"--he explains pompously--for he loves to tackle the difficult--even adjectively. His shiny bald pate is scarce covered by a Belgian fatigue cap, whose tassel bobs in the old man's eyes, and when he carried his long treasured gold to the bank, he refused to take its equivalent in notes. It was necessary to have recourse to the principal cashier, who assured him that if France needed money she would call upon him first. Then and then only would he consent to accept.

He is a Lorrainer--a true Frenchman, who in the midst of all the sorrows brought on by the conflict, has known two real joys: the first when his son was promoted and made lieutenant on the battle field; the second when his friends the Vidalenc and the Lemots made up a quarrel that had lasted over twelve years.