After the battle of the Marne the old vitality of Paris was gradually
restored. The people who had fled by hundreds of thousands dribbled
back steadily from England and provincial towns where they had
hated their exile and had been ashamed of their flight. They came
back to their small flats or attic room rejoicing to find all safe under a
layer of dust--shedding tears, some of them, when they saw the
children's toys, which had been left in a litter on the floor, and the
open piano with a song on the music-rack, which a girl had left as she
rose in the middle of a bar, wavering off into a cry of fear, and all the
domestic treasures which had been gathered through a life of toil and
abandoned--for ever it seemed--when the enemy was reported within
twenty miles of Paris in irresistible strength. The city had been saved.
The Germans were in full retreat. The great shadow of fear had been
lifted and the joy of a great hope thrilled through the soul of Paris, in
spite of all that death là-bas, where so many young men were making
sacrifices of their lives for France.

As the weeks passed the streets became more thronged, and the
shops began to re-open, their business conducted for the most part
by women and old people. A great hostile army was entrenched less
than sixty miles away. A ceaseless battle, always threatening the
roads to Paris, from Amiens and Soissons, Rheims and Vic-sur-
Aisne, was raging night and day, month after month. But for the
moment when the enemy retreated to the Aisne, the fear which had
been like a black pall over the spirit of Paris, lifted as though a great
wind had blown it away, and the people revealed a sane, strong spirit
of courage and confidence and patience, amazing to those who still
believed in the frivolity and nervousness and unsteady emotionalism
of the Parisian population.