And so we left them
all--smoking; smoking out there in the ruins, smoking and dreaming of
home. Of home and love unattainable beyond the Rhine; of home and love
buried forever in the wreckage of war and of time.
* * * * *
This week Mademoiselle Froissart and I spent forty-eight hours in Paris,
during which time we purchased one thousand toys for our Christmas
party. Such a time as I had coralling a taxi to carry our large crate
of playthings to the station. Paris was gay and crowded, making up for
its four years of gravity, and the conscienceless taxi drivers were
having pretty much their own way, refusing all that were going in a
direction that did not suit their convenience, and extorting enormous
_pour boire_. I stood on the edge of the mad stream of vehicles that
pressed by on the boulevard, and watched for an empty taxi. One came,
the old reprobate who drove it casting his practiced eye about for a
likely looking customer. He deigned to notice me, recognizing me for an
American, and well knowing our national childish impatience, and its
lucrative consequences. He drove up to the curb.
"Where to?" he asked defiantly, blinking his bleary eyes, his red
alcoholic face set in insolent lines.
"_La Gare du Nord._"
He reflected an instant. "Bon," he decided. I got in, resolving to take
possession before breaking all the news to him.
"First I must stop at the _Grand Bazaar_ to call for a box," I said in
a most matter-of-fact way.
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