Paris is the ideal city for afternoon-before-Christmas shopping. Much of the Christmas trading is on the streets. It gets dark early enough to enjoy the effect of the lights for a couple of hours before you have to go home. You have crowds to your heart's content. And Paris is the department-store city _par excellence_. Scrooge would not have needed a ghost in Paris. If you have no Christmas spirit, go to the Bazar de la Rue de Rennes, the Bon Marché, the Trois-Quartiers, the Printemps, the Galeries Lafayette, Dufayel, the Louvre, the Belle Jardinière and the Bazar de l'Hôtel de Ville. Do not miss any of these, especially the first and the last. At the Bazar de la Rue de Rennes the Christmas toys are on counters according to price. Woolworth only tells you what you can get for five or ten cents. The range of prices on the Rue de Rennes is adjusted to all pocketbooks. At the Hôtel de Ville you do not have to wait for a saleswoman at the outside _rayons_. You hold up the article you want and catch the cashier's eye. He pokes out to you a box on the end of a pole such as they used to use in churches before we became honest enough to be trusted with a plate. You put your money in. If there is change, he thrusts it back immediately.
On the Grands Boulevards and in our own Montparnasse Quarter, the Christmas crowds were like those of the happy days before we entered into the valley of the shadow. As we did our rounds, falling back into peace habits and the old frame of mind, I realized how hollow was our celebration of the war Christmases, how we pretended and made the effort for our children's sakes. The nightmare was finished! Really, I suppose, we had less money than ever to spend and everything was dear. But everybody was buying in a lavish way that was natural after the repression of years. Bargaining--a practise in street buying before the war--would have been bad taste. We paid cheerfully what was asked.
I was hurrying home along the Rue de Rennes with one of my soldier guests. Herbert and my brother had left us on the Boulevards to get ham and tongue at Appenrodt's and peanuts and sweet potatoes at Hédiard's. A vender, recognizing the American uniform, accosted my companion with a grin, as she held out an armful of mimosa blossoms.