During the Franco-Prussian War all party feeling was
forgotten. Every man was first a Frenchman in the face of a foreign foe,
and if they could have stood firmly together in those first days after
the war the strength of the country would have been wonderful. All
Europe was astounded at the way in which France paid her milliards,--no
one more so than Bismarck, who is supposed to have said that, if he
could have dreamed that France could pay that enormous sum so quickly,
he would have asked much more.
December was very cold, snow and ice everywhere, and very hard frosts,
which didn't give way at all when the sun came out occasionally in the
middle of the day. Everybody was skating, not only at the clubs of the
Bois de Boulogne, but on the lakes, which happens very rarely, as the
water is fairly deep. The Seine was full of large blocks of ice, which
got jammed up against the bridges and made a jarring ugly sound as they
knocked against each other. The river steamers had stopped running, and
there were crowds of flaneurs loitering on the quais and bridges
wondering if the cold would last long enough for the river to be quite
frozen over.
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