There lay the white church of Sacré Cœur, there the Gare du Nord, from
which the French thought to leave for across the Rhine; there Notre
Dame, there the old “Boul Mich,” the Boulevard St. Michel, in the Latin
Quarter, where I Bohemianized so long as an art student, and over
which I now flew as a conqueror. Unprotected beneath me lay the heart
of the enemy, the proud glittering Babel of the Seine. The thought of
everything hateful, always attached to the great city, was swallowed
up; an emotion of possession, of power, alone remained. And doubly
joyful we felt ourselves. Doubly conquerors! In a great circle I swept
over the sea of houses. In the streets raised itself a murmuring of the
people, whom the bold “German bird” astonished, who cannot understand
how the Germans are turning the French discovery to their own service
more cleverly and advantageously than the French themselves.