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themselves with wine, and enjoyed to the fullest the gaudy life of Paris.

Workers returned to the factories, scientists to their laboratories, harlots to the boulevards, and black marketeers to the bistros.

Cut into the open came Jennie the dressmaker, Israel the furrier, Jacques the restaurateur, Fabien the artist; singly, like lost leaves from a tree that stands no more.

Out of his hiding place came Shmulik, the knitgoods worker, blinking at the sun. Shmulik, who had spent the past two years in the chimney of his boarding house. For this luxury he had parted with his entire hard-earned savings of the last twenty years. Squinting with half-blind eyes at the unfamiliar sunlight, he was now seeking a road for himself, an easy road on which to trudge the few lonely years still ahead of him. Having nothing more to lose, neither home, nor family, nor morale, nor faith, he was easily drawn into the broad net of the black market.

The dead were forgotten; the survivors quickly adopted the philosophy of the Preacher; Eat, live and be merry, for tomorrow we die. A cynical je m'en fou dominated the masses. The black market industry grew frightfully like a giant octopus, embracing all strata of the population.

• * *

It was one of those golden autumn days, yellow with windy sunlight, when Anna left the hospital. After four weeks in bed her feet became unsteady like a sailor's after a prolonged sea-journey.

She was gripped by the nightmarish feeling, as if hidden booby-traps threatened her at every street corner. She edged her way to the Place de la Nation, and sat down on a bench