Antwerp to Gallipoli - A Year of the War on Many Fronts--and Behind Them | Page 8

light tracery of the Eiffel Tower,
covered with little specks of people, all looking upward. Back along the
boulevards, on roofs on both banks, all Paris, in fact, was similarly
staring--"Le nez en l'air." And straight overhead, so far up that even the

murmur of the motor was unheard, no more than a bird, indeed, against
the pale sky, "Mr. Taube," circling indolently about, picking his
moment, plotting our death.
I thought of the shudder of outraged horror that ran over Antwerp when
the first Zeppelin came. It seemed the last unnecessary blow to a heroic
people who had already stood so much. Very different was "Mr.
Taube's" reception here. He might have been a holiday balloon or some
particularly fancy piece of fireworks. Everywhere people were staring
upward, looking through their closed fists, through opera-glasses. Out
of the arcades of the Hotel de Crillon one man in a bath-robe and
another in a suit of purple underclothes came running, to gaze calmly
into the zenith until the "von" had gone.
As the little speck drew straight overhead, these human specks
scattered over the Place de la Concorde suddenly realized that they
were in the line of fire, and scattered just as people run from a sudden
shower. This was the most interesting thing--these helpless little
humans scrambling away like ants or beetles to shelter, and that tiny
insolent bird sailing slowly far overhead. This was a bit of the modern
war one reads about--it was a picture from some fanciful story of Mr. H.
G. Wells. They scattered for the arcades, and some, quaintly enough,
ran under the trees in the near-by Champs-Elysées. There was a
"Bang!" at which everybody shouted "There!" but it was not a bomb,
only part of the absurd fusillade that now began. They were firing from
the Eiffel Tower, whence they might possibly have hit something, and
from roofs with ordinary guns and revolvers which could not possibly
have hit anything at all. In the gray haze that hung over Paris the next
morning, I wandered through empty streets and finally, with some
vague notion of looking out, up the hill of Montmartre. All Paris lay
below, mysterious in the mist, with that strange, poignant beauty of
something trembling on the verge. One could follow the line of the
Seine and see the dome of the Invalides, but nothing beyond. I went
down a little way from the summit and, still on the hill, turned into the
Rue des Abbesses, crowded with vegetable carts and thrifty housewives.
The gray air was filled with their bargaining, with the smell of
vegetables and fruit, and there, in front of two men playing violins, a
girl in black, with a white handkerchief loosely knotted about her throat,
was singing of the little Alsatian boy, shot by the Prussians because he

cried "Vive la France!" and threatened them with his wooden gun.
True or not, it was one of those things that get believed. Verses were
written about it and pictures made of it all over Paris--presently it
would be history. And this girl, true child of the asphalt, was flinging it
at them, holding the hearts of these broad-faced mothers in the hollow
of her hand. She would sing one verse, pause, and sell copies of the
song, then put a hand to her hoarse throat and sing again. The music
was not sold with the song, and it was rather difficult--a mournful sort
of recitative with sudden shifts into marching rhythm--and so the
people sang the words over and over with her until they had almost
learned the tune. You can imagine how a Frenchman--he was a young
fellow, who lived in a rear tenement over on the other side of
Montmartre--would write that song. The little boy, who was going to
"free his brothers back there in Alsace" when he grew up, playing
soldier--"Joyeux, il murmurait: Je suis petit, en somme, Mais viendra
bien le jour, ou je serai un homme, Ardeat! Vaillanti..."--the
Prussians--monstres odieux--smashing into the village, the cry "Maman!
Maman!"--and after each verse a pause, and slowly and lower down,
with the crowd joining in, "Petit--enfant" ("Little boy, close your big
blue eyes, for the bandits are hideous and cruel, and they will kill you if
they read your brave thoughts") "ferme tes grands yeux bleus."
The violins mixed with the voices of the market-women, crying their
artichokes and haricots, and above them rang--"Ardent! Vaillant! ..."
Audit might have been the voice of Paris itself, lying down there in her
mist, Paris of lost Alsace and hopeless revanche, of ardor and charm
crushed once, as they might be again, as the voice of that pale girl in
black, with her air of coming from lights and cigarette smoke, and of
these simple mothers rose above