When a great burden is lifted, the relief is not always felt at
once. The galled places still ache. The sense of weight persists.
And so with Paris. Not at once did the city rejoice openly. It
prayed first, and then it counted the sore spots, and they were
many. And it was dazed, too. There had been no time to discount
peace in advance.
The streets filled at once, but at first it was with a chastened
people. Audrey herself felt numb and unreal. She moved mechanically
with the shifting crowd, looking overhead as a captured German plane
flew by, trying to comprehend the incomprehensible. But by mid-day
the sober note of the crowds had risen to a higher pitch. A file
of American doughboys, led by a corporal with a tin trumpet and
officered by a sergeant with an enormous American cigar,
goose-stepped down the Avenue de l'Opera, gaining recruits at every
step. It snake-danced madly through the crowd, singing that one
lyric stand-by of Young America: "Hail! hail! the gang's all here!"
But the gang was not all there, and they knew it.
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