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The bridge was defended by a cordon of police ranged in front of a large body of Gendarmerie mobile, wearing the familiar dark blue white-braided kepis and the dark blue tunics with white aiguillettes. At first, as I have already said, we advanced but slowly towards that defending force; but, all at once, we were swept onward by other men who had come from the Boulevards, in our wake.
Some of his cofeuilletonists declare that purifying waters seldom touch their calcined skin. In short, the terrible Raoul is grotesque. His movements are jerky, as if produced by imperfect machinery; his gait rejects all idea of order, and proceeds by spasmodic zig-zags and sudden stoppages, which knock him violently against peaceable citizens on the streets and boulevards of Paris.
So much originality indeed was expended on placards in Paris, that one of that peculiar kind of maniacs, known as a collector, possesses a complete series. At first the placard was confined to the shop-windows and stalls upon the Boulevards in Paris; afterwards it spread all over France, till it was supplanted to some extent by a return to advertisements in the newspapers.
She had no Channel, as England had, between her and the foe. Defeat meant the heel of the enemy on her soil, German sentries in her streets, submission. Long and hard she had trained; while the outside world, thinking of the Paris of the boulevards, thought that she could not resist the Kaiser's legions. She was effeminate, effete.
Even at an early hour Brussels seemed crowded and as the tram passed along the handsome boulevards the shops were being opened and tourists were on their way to Waterloo in brakes. Every one seemed to think in mid-August, 1914, that Germany was destined to receive her coup-de-grâce on the field of Waterloo. It would be so appropriate.
The new rulers of the country were mostly very young men, who were conspicuous for their enthusiasm and their daring but not for their judgment and experience. They had picked upon the boulevards and in the Quartier Latin of Paris and in Geneva the sonorous phrases of Western democracy and demagogy, and with these they impressed, not only their fellow citizens, but also the onlookers in Europe.
Yet these artists had deserted the asphalt of the boulevards for the cobbles of a village street, the delights of the cafe chantant had been exchanged for the miracle of the moon rising over the sea, and for the song of the thrush in the bush.
One sees at once how few straight streets there are the Ricasoli standing out among them as the exception; and one realizes how the city has developed outside, with its boulevards where the walls once were, leaving the gates isolated, and its cincture of factories. The occasional glimpses of cloisters and verdure among the red are very pleasant.
The old musician fled down the staircase in haste; but he went slowly along the boulevards to his theatre, he turned in mechanically at the door, and mechanically he took his place and conducted the orchestra. In the interval he gave such random answers to Schmucke's questions, that his old friend dissembled his fear that Pons' mind had given way.
Returning to an examination of the panorama, my companion pointed out to me that there was no break in the boulevards, where the opera-house, with its seven radiating avenues, now stands, but a long line of Hôtels, dozing behind high walls, and quaint two-storied buildings that undoubtedly dated from the razing of the city wall and the opening of the new thoroughfare under Louis XV.
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