Chapter 5 No.5

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.

VIEW OF ST. GERVAIS FROM MADAME HUARD'S PARIS HOME (BOMBARDED BY GERMAN SUPER CANNON, APRIL, 1918)

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.

"I was in a very embarrassing position," he explained, "for I held both families in equal esteem. Fortunately the war came and settled matters. When I say fortunately, of course, you understand, Madame, what I mean. 'A quelquechose malheur est bon.'"

And in truth the original cause of difference between the Lemots, drapers, and the Vidalenc, coal and wood dealers, had been lost in the depths of time. But no hate between Montague and Capulet was ever more bitter. The gentle flame of antipathy was constantly kept kindled by a glance in passing, a half audible sneer, and if the Vidalenc chose the day of the White Sale to hang out and beat their stock of coal sacks, one might be certain that the Lemots would be seized with a fit of cleanliness on the coldest of winter days, and would play the hose up and down the street in the freezing air about an hour or so before the Vidalencs would have to unload their coal wagons.

The younger generation, on leaving school every afternoon, would also see to it that the family feud be properly recognised, and many and bitter were the mutual pummelings.

Reconciliation seemed an impossibility, and yet both were hardworking, honest families, economical and gracious, rejoicing in the friendship of the entire quarter, who, of course, were much pained by the situation.

Even the mobilisation failed to bring a truce and the unforgettable words of "Sacred Unity" fell upon arid ground.

But how strange, mysterious and far reaching are the designs of Providence. Young Vidalenc was put into a regiment that was brigaded with the one to which belonged Monsieur Lemot.

The two men met "Out there," and literally fell into each other's arms.

A letter containing a description of this event arrived in the two shops at almost the same moment. That is to say the postman first went to Father Vidalenc's, but by the time the old man had found his spectacles, Madame Lemot had received her missive, and both were practically read at once. Then came the dash for the other's shop, the paper waving wildly in the air.

Of course, they met in the street, stopped short, hesitated, collapsed, wept and embraced, to the utter amazement of the entire quarter who feared not only that something fatal had happened, but also for their mental safety.

Later in the day the news got abroad, and by nightfall every one had heard that Father Vidalenc had washed Madame Lemot's store windows, and that Madame Lemot had promised to have an eye to Vidalenc's accounts, which had been somewhat abandoned since the departure of his son.

When Lemot returned on furlough there was a grand dinner given in his honour at Vidalenc's, and when Vidalenc dined at Lemot's, it was assuredly amusing to see the latter's children all togged out in their Sunday best, a tri-colour bouquet in hand, waiting on their doorstep to greet and conduct the old man.

Unfortunately there was no daughter to give in matrimony so that they might marry and live happily ever after. But on my last trip home I caught a glimpse of an unknown girlish face behind Madame Lemot's counter, and somebody told me it was her niece.

It would not only be unfair, but a gross error on my part to attempt to depict life in our quarter without mentioning one of the most notable inhabitants-namely Monsieur Alexandre Clouet, taylor, so read the sign over the door of the shop belonging to this pompous little person-who closed that shop on August 2nd, 1914, and rallied to the colours. But unlike the vulgar herd he did not scribble in huge chalk letters all over the blinds-"The boss has joined the army." No, indeed, not he!

Twenty four hours later appeared a most elaborate meticulous sign which announced:

MONSIEUR CLOUET

wishes to inform his numerous

customers that he has joined the ranks

of the 169th infantry, and shall do

his duty as a Frenchman.

His wife returned to her father's home, and it was she who pasted up the series of neat little bulletins. First we read:

MONSIEUR CLOUET

is in the trenches but his health is

excellent.

He begs his customers and friends

to send him news of themselves.

Postal Sector 24X.

I showed the little sign to my friends who grew to take an interest in Monsieur Clouet's personal welfare, and passing by his shop they would copy down the latest news and forward it to me, first at Villiers, and afterwards to the States.

It is thus that I learned that Monsieur Clouet, gloriously wounded, had been cared for at a hospital in Cahors, and later on that he had recovered, rejoined his depot and finally returned to the front.

One of my first outings during my last trip sent me in the direction of Monsieur Clouet's abode. I was decidedly anxious to know what had become of him. To my surprise I found the shop open, but a huge announcement hung just above the entrance.

MONSIEUR CLOUET

gloriously wounded and decorated

with the Military Medal, regrets to

state that in future it will be

impossible for him to continue giving his

personal attention to his business.

His wife and his father-in-law will

hereafter combine their efforts to give

every satisfaction to his numerous

customers.

I entered. For the moment the wife and the father-in-law were combining their efforts to convince a very stout, elderly gentleman that check trousers would make him look like a sylph.

"Ah, Madame, what a surprise," she cried, on seeing me.

"But your husband?" I queried. "Is it really serious-do tell me!"

"Alas, Madame, he says he'll never put his foot in the shop again. You see he's very sensitive since he was scalped, and he's afraid somebody might know he has to wear a wig!"