But a year or two of peace, and the city will rise again,
as after the Franco-Prussian War and the Commune, which laid upon it a
sufficiently blighting hand. In spite of fickle fortune and its many ups
and downs it is, and will ever remain, "Paris, the Changeless."
I never saw the town so much itself as just before the beginning of the
world war. I took my departure in the early summer of that fateful year and
left all things booming--not a sign or trace that there had ever been aught
but boundless happiness and prosperity. It is hard, the saying has it,
to keep a squirrel on the ground, and surely Paris is the squirrel among
cities. The season just ended had been, everybody declared, uncommonly
successful from the standpoints alike of the hotels and cafes, the shop
folk and their patrons, not to mention the purely pleasure-seeking throng.
People seemed loaded with money and giddy to spend it.
The headwaiter at Voisin's told me this: "Mr. Barnes, of New York, ordered
a dinner, carte blanche, for twelve.
"'Now,' says he, 'garcon, have everything bang up, and here's seventy-five
francs for a starter.'
"The dinner was bang up. Everybody hilarious. Mr. Barnes immensely pleased.
When he came to pay his bill, which was a corker, he made no objection.
"'Garcon,' says he, 'if I ask you a question will you tell me the truth?'
"'_Oui, monsieur; certainement._'
"Well, how much was the largest tip you ever received?"
"Seventy-five francs, monsieur.
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