At the
next table two Russian officers, with high cheek-bones and wide-set
eyes, were drinking, chatting together in their purring, unintelligible
tongue. Beyond them a party of Englishmen in khaki, cool-mannered, clear
of gaze, were talking in low tones of the spring offensive. The uniforms
of France swarmed round me in all their variety, and close at hand a
general, gorgeous in red and blue and gold, sat with his hand resting
affectionately on the knee of a lad in the horizon blue of a simple
poilu, who was so like him that I guessed them at a glance for father
and son.
A cab drew up before me, and a Belgian officer with crutches was helped
out by the cafe starter, who himself limped slightly and wore two medals
on his breast. First one troop and then another defiled across the Place
l'Opera: a company of infantry with bayonets mounted, a picturesque
regiment of Moroccans, turbaned, of magnificently impassive bearing,
sitting their horses like images of bronze. Men of the Flying Corps,
in dark blue with wings on their sleeves, strolled past me; and once,
roused by exclamations and pointing fingers, I looked up to see a
monoplane, light and graceful as a darting bird, skimming above our
heads.
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