Even without this subjective inquietude it would have been an unpleasant
summer. All the world was at sixes and sevens, the social unrest stirred up
by the war showed no signs of subsiding, but indeed, quite the contrary,
there was trouble in the very air--ominous portents of a storm whose dull,
grim growling down the horizon could be heard only too clearly by those who
did not wilfully close their ears, grin fatuous complacence, and bleat like
brainless sheep: "All's well!"

High-spirited youth and witless wealth a-lust for strange new pleasures
turned from the long strain of conflict to indulgence in endless orgies of
extravagance like nothing ever witnessed by a world long since surfeited
with contemplation of weird excesses: daily that wild dance of death
attained wilder stages of saturnalia, the bands blaring ever louder to
drown the mutter of savage elemental forces working underneath the crust.

And ever and anon a lull would fall and the world would shudder to the
iteration of a word that spelled calamity to all things fair and sweet and
lovable in life, the word _Bolshevism_....

In the Café des Exiles there was endless discord and strife.

For several reasons trade was not what it had been, even for the slack
season of summer it was poor. The cost of everything had gone up, waiters
were insubordinate and unreasonable in their demands, Mama Thérèse had been
constrained to increase the fixed price of the dinner, old customers took
umbrage at this and their patronage elsewhere.

Mama Thérèse cultivated a temper that grew day by day more vile, Papa
Dupont displayed new artfulness in the matter of sneaking his daily toll of