"
"So they say," she murmured, glancing through the window at the
prospect of roofs and chimney-cowls. "Provided that it finishes
well..."
Except by the look in her eyes, and by the destruction of her once
good complexion, it was impossible to divine that this woman's
habits had ever been disturbed in the slightest detail. But the gaze
and the complexion told the tale.
Next: the Boulevard St. Germain. A majestic flat, heavily and
sombrely furnished. The great drawing-room is shut and sheeted
with holland. It has been shut for twenty years. The mistress of this
home is an aged widow of inflexible will and astounding activity. She
gets up at five a.m., and no cook has ever yet satisfied her. The
master is her son, a bachelor of fifty. He is paralysed, and always
perfectly dressed in the English taste, he passes his life in a
wheeled chair. The home is centred in his study, full of books,
engravings, a large safe, telephone, theatrophone, newspapers,
cigarettes, easy-chairs. When I go in, an old friend, a stockbroker, is
there, and "thees" and "thous" abound in the conversation, which
runs on investments, the new English loan, banking accounts in
London, the rent moratorium in Paris, and the war. It is said that
every German is a critic of war. But so is every Frenchman a critic of
war. The criticism I now hear is the best spoken criticism, utterly
impartial, that I have heard.
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