Within the first week over two
thirds of the shops had closed--the greater number bearing on their
shuttered windows the notice "Pour cause de mobilisation," which
showed that the "patron" and staff were at the front. But enough
remained open to satisfy every ordinary want, and the closing of the
others served to prove how much one could do without. Provisions
were as cheap and plentiful as ever, though for a while it was
easier to buy food than to have it cooked. The restaurants were
closing rapidly, and one often had to wander a long way for a meal,
and wait a longer time to get it. A few hotels still carried on a
halting life, galvanized by an occasional inrush of travel from
Belgium and Germany; but most of them had closed or were being
hastily transformed into hospitals.
The signs over these hotel doors first disturbed the dreaming
harmony of Paris. In a night, as it seemed, the whole city was hung
with Red Crosses. Every other building showed the red and white band
across its front, with "Ouvroir" or "Hopital" beneath; there
was something sinister in these preparations for horrors in which
one could not yet believe, in the making of bandages for limbs yet
sound and whole, the spreading of pillows for heads yet carried
high.
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