di. The pretty, black-eyed Bordelaise--there
are pretty girls in Bordeaux--often seems closer to Madrid than to
Paris; even the Bordelais accent has a touch of the Mediterranean, and
the crisp words of Paris are broken up and even an extra vowel added now
and then, until they ripple like Spanish or Italian. "Pe-tite-a ma-
dame-a !" rattles some little newsboy, ingratiating himself with an
indifferent lady of uncertain age; and the porter will bring your boots
in no time-in "une-a pe-tite-a mi-nute-a."

The war is in everybody's mind, of course--no one in France thinks of
anything else--but there is none of that silence and tenseness, that
emotional tremor, one feels in Paris. The Germans will never come here,
one feels, no matter what happens, and as you read the communiques in La
Petite Gironde and La Liberte du Sud-Ouest the war seems farther away, I
feel pretty sure, than it does in front of the newspaper bill-boards in
New York.

In fact, one of the first and abiding impressions of Bordeaux is that it
is a great place for things to eat--oysters from Marennes, lobsters and
langoustes, pears big as cantaloupes, pomegranates, mushrooms--the
little ones and the big cepes of Bordeaux--yellow dates just up from
Tunis. The fruiterers' shops not only make you hungry, but into some of
them you may enter and find a quiet little room up-stairs, where the
proprietor and his wife and daughter, in the genial French fashion, will
serve you with a cosey little dinner with wine for three francs, in
front of the family grate fire, and the privilege of ordering up
anything you want from the shop-window below.

There are attractive little chocolate and pastry shops and cheerful
semi-pension restaurants where whole families, including, in these days,
minor politicians with axes to grind and occasional young women from the
boulevards, all dine together in a warm bustle of talk, smoke, the
gurgle of claret, and tear off chunks of hard French bread, while madame
the proprietress, a handsome, dark-eyed, rather Spanish-looking
Bordelaise, sails round, subduing the impatient, smiling at those who
wish to be smiled at, and ordering her faithful waiters about like a
drill-sergeant.

And then there is the Chapon fin. When you speak to some elderly
gentleman with fastidious gastronomical tastes and an acquaintance with
southern France of your intention of going to Bordeaux, he murmurs
reminiscently: "Ah, yes! There is a restaurant there