Many of the business streets have a semi-Sunday appearance.

Boulevards running from the Place de l'Opera are well filled with people, and nearly all of the stores are now open.

In the first weeks of December you could see the reopening day by day, and when on the 10th the government returned to Paris, the art stores and the jewelry stores joined with the confectioners, trunk dealers, and book-men, and threw open shutters that had been closed four months.
Paris is now normal but not crowded.

Theaters are reopening, but the restaurants must be closed at ten P.M.

The inhabitants young and old picnic in the Bois de Boulogne and evince most interest in the defences about the Paris gates,--the moats, the new trenches that have been dug, and the tree-trunks that have been thrown down with their branches and tops pointing outward as though to interrupt the progress of an enemy.
Buildings have been taken down, and the forts of Paris stand forth as never before; but when you learn how unmanned and how useless they are in modern warfare, you can but smile and join with the people in their curiosity excursions.