Paris was truly awake by that time, and going mad. The long-quiet
fountains were playing, Poilus and American soldiers had seized
captured German cannon and were hauling them wildly about. If in
the morning the crowd had been largely khaki, now the French blue
predominated. Flags and confetti were everywhere, and every motor,
as it, pushed slowly through the crowd, carried on roof and running
board and engine hood crowds of self-invited passengers. A British
band was playing near the fountain. A line of helmets above the
mass and wild cheers revealed French cavalry riding through, and,
heralded by jeers and much applause came a procession of the
proletariat, of odds and ends, soldiers and shop-girls, mechanics
and street-sweepers and cabmen and students, carrying an effigy
of the Kaiser on a gibbet.
As the sun went down, the outlines of the rejoicing city took on
the faint mist-blue of a dream city. It softened the outlines of
the Eiffel tower to strange and fairy-like beauty and gave to the
trees in the Tuileries gardens the lack of definition of an old
engraving.
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