impression, when I had first stood there many years ago,
of an angry Paris mob beating against that grill, of the Swiss guards
dying on the stairway for their Queen. But it was no use. France has
undergone some subtle change, yet I knew I was in France. I knew it when
we left Paris and sped through the dim leafy tunnels of the Bois; when I
beheld a touch of filtered sunlight on the dense blue thatch of the
'marroniers' behind the walls of a vast estate once dedicated to the
sports and pleasures of Kings; when I caught glimpses of silent chateaux
mirrored in still waters.

I was on my way, with one of our naval officers, to visit an American
naval base on the western coast. It was France, but the laughter had
died on her lips. A few women and old men and children were to be seen
in the villages, a bent figure in a field, an occasional cart that drew
aside as we hurried at eighty kilometers an hour along deserted routes
drawn as with a ruler across the land. Sometimes the road dipped into a
canyon of poplars, and the sky between their crests was a tiny strip of
mottled blue and white. The sun crept in and out, the clouds cast
shadows on the hills; here and there the tower of lonely church or castle
broke the line of a distant ridge. Morning-glories nodded over lodge
walls where the ivy was turning crimson, and the little gardens were
masses of colours--French colours like that in the beds of the Tuileries,
brick-red geraniums and dahlias, yellow marigolds and purple asters.

We lunched at one of the little inns that for generations have been
tucked away in the narrow streets of provincial towns; this time a Cheval
Blanc, with an unimposing front and a blaze of sunshine in its heart.
After a dejeuner fit for the most exacting of bon viveurs we sat in that
courtyard and smoked, while an ancient waiter served us with coffee that
dripped through silver percolators into our glasses. The tourists have
fled. "If happily you should come again, monsieur," said madame, as she
led me with pardonable pride through her immaculate bedrooms and salons
with wavy floors. And I dwelt upon a future holiday there, on the joys
of sharing with a friend that historic place. The next afternoon I
lingered in another town, built on a little hill ringed about with
ancient walls, from whose battlements tide-veined marshes stretched away
to a gleaming sea. A figure flitting through the cobbled streets, a
woman in black who sat sewing, se