The car traversed a winding drive through woods, between banks
embellished with little chalets of a rustic nature. At first,
the chalets stood their full height above ground, suggesting
tea-gardens in England. Further on they sank into the earth
till, at the top of the ascent, only their solid brown roofs
showed. Torn branches drooping across the driveway, with here
and there a scorched patch of undergrowth, explained the
reason of their modesty.

Sku: francewar

THE LINE
Form a line!
Get in line!
From the time that I enlisted
And since Jerry armististed
I’ve been standing, kidding, cussing,
I’ve been waiting, fuming, fussing,
In a line.
I have stood in line in mud and slime and sleet,
With the dirty water oozing from my feet,
I have soaked and slid and slipped,
While my tacky slicker dripped,
And I wondered what they’d hand me out to eat.

Sku: iwastherewiththeyanks1

How delicious to escape from the fever heat and turmoil of Paris during
the Exhibition to the green banks and sheltered ways of the gently
undulating Marne! With what delight we wake up in the morning to the
noise, if noise it can be called, of the mower’s scythe, the rustle of
acacia leaves, and the notes of the stock-dove, looking back as upon a
nightmare to the horn of the tramway conductor, and the perpetual grind
of the stone-mason’s saw. Yes! to quit Paris at a time of tropic heat,
and nestle down in some country resort is, indeed, like exchanging
Dante’s lower circle for Paradise. The heat has followed us here, but
with a screen of luxuriant foliage ever between us and the burning blue
sky, and with a breeze rippling the leaves always, no one need complain.

Sku: holidaysineasternfrance

Louis XVIII. in 1815 returned to his throne, borne on the shoulders
of foreign soldiers, after the fight at Waterloo. The allied armies
had a second time entered France to make her pass under the saws
and harrows of humiliation. Paris was gay, for money was spent
freely by the invading strangers. Sacrifices on the altar of the
Emperor were over; enthusiasm for the extension of the great ideas
of the Revolution had passed away; a new generation had been born
which cared more for material prosperity than for such ideas; the
foundation of many fortunes had been laid; mothers who dreaded
the conscription, and men weary of war and politics, drew a long
breath, and did not regret the loss of that which had animated
a preceding generation, in a view of a peace which was to bring
wealth, comfort, and tranquillity into their own homes.

Sku: franceinthenineteenthcentury2

Louis XVIII. in 1815 returned to his throne, borne on the shoulders
of foreign soldiers, after the fight at Waterloo. The allied armies
had a second time entered France to make her pass under the saws
and harrows of humiliation. Paris was gay, for money was spent
freely by the invading strangers. Sacrifices on the altar of the
Emperor were over; enthusiasm for the extension of the great ideas
of the Revolution had passed away; a new generation had been born
which cared more for material prosperity than for such ideas; the
foundation of many fortunes had been laid; mothers who dreaded
the conscription, and men weary of war and politics, drew a long
breath, and did not regret the loss of that which had animated
a preceding generation, in a view of a peace which was to bring
wealth, comfort, and tranquillity into their own homes.

Sku: franceinthenineteenthcentury1

France, when she undertook the creation of a Bourbon empire beyond the
seas, was the first nation of Europe. Her population was larger than
that of Spain, and three times that of England. Her army in the days
of Louis Quatorze, numbering nearly a half-million in all ranks, was
larger than that of Rome at the height of the imperial power. No
nation since the fall of Roman supremacy had possessed such resources
for conquering and colonizing new lands. By the middle of the
seventeenth century Spain had ceased to be a dangerous rival; Germany
and Italy were at the time little more than geographical expressions,
while England was in the throes of the Puritan Revolution.

Sku: crusadersofnewfrance

My first experience of country life in France, about thirty years ago,
was in a fine old chateau standing high in pretty, undulating, wooded
country close to the forest of Villers-Cotterets, and overlooking the
great plains of the Oise–big green fields stretching away to the
sky-line, broken occasionally by little clumps of wood, with steeples
rising out of the green, marking the villages and hamlets which, at
intervals, are scattered over the plains, and in the distance the blue
line of the forest. The chateau was a long, perfectly simple, white
stone building. When I first saw it, one bright November afternoon, I
said to my husband as we drove up, “What a charming old wooden house!”
which remark so astonished him that he could hardly explain that it
was all stone, and that no big houses (nor small, either) in France
were built of wood. I, having been born in a large white wooden house
in America, couldn’t understand why he was so horrified at my
ignorance of French architecture.

Sku: chateauandcountry1

We good Americans – I say it without presumption
- are too apt to think that France is Paris, just as we
are accused of being too apt to think that Paris is the
celestial city. This is by no means the case, fortunately
for those persons who take an interest in modern
Gaul, and yet are still left vaguely unsatisfied by that
epitome of civilization which stretches from the Arc
de Triomphe to the Gymnase theatre. It had already
been intimated to the author of these light pages that
there are many good things in the _doux pays de France_
of which you get no hint in a walk between those
ornaments of the capital; but the truth had been revealed
only in quick-flashing glimpses, and he was
conscious of a desire to look it well in the face.

Sku: alittletourinfrance1

The death of the Prince of Conde, which occurred in the spring of
1588, by depriving me of my only patron, reduced me to such
straits that the winter of that year, which saw the King of
Navarre come to spend his Christmas at St. Jean d’Angely, saw
also the nadir of my fortunes. I did not know at this time–I
may confess it to-day without shame–wither to turn for a gold
crown or a new scabbard, and neither had nor discerned any hope
of employment. The peace lately patched up at Blois between the
King of France and the League persuaded many of the Huguenots
that their final ruin was at hand; but it could not fill their
exhausted treasury or enable them to put fresh troops into the
field.

Sku: agentlemanoffrance1

Powerful story in a 110 page novel that you can print out & enjoy. Only $1!

Marie Gessler, known as Marie Chaumontel, Jeanne d’Avrechy, the Countess
d’Aurillac, was German. Her father, who served through the
Franco-Prussian War, was a German spy. It was from her mother she
learned to speak French sufficiently well to satisfy even an Academician
and, among Parisians, to pass as one. Both her parents were dead. Before
they departed, knowing they could leave their daughter nothing save
their debts, they had had her trained as a nurse. But when they were
gone, Marie in the Berlin hospitals played politics, intrigued,
indiscriminately misused the appealing, violet eyes. There was a
scandal; several scandals. At the age of twenty-five she was dismissed
from the Municipal Hospital, and as now–save for the violet eyes–she
was without resources, as a _compagnon de voyage_ with a German doctor
she travelled to Monte Carlo. There she abandoned the doctor for Henri
Ravignac, a captain in the French Aviation Corps, who, when his leave
ended, escorted her to Paris.

110 pages of goodness!

Sku: somewhereinfrance1