enant, Inspector Pigot.

At each station, as the train rolled on, great crowds gathered to meet
it--crowds strangely silent, inarticulate with grief, furious,
suspicious of they knew not what. Terrible rumours were abroad--rumours
of treachery, of treason striking at the very heart of France. No one
dared repeat these rumours, but nevertheless they ran up and down the
land. The _Jena_ and now the _Liberte_! True, the Board of Inquiry,
which had investigated the destruction of the _Jena_, had decided that
that catastrophe was due to the spontaneous combustion of the powder in
her magazines. France had accepted the verdict; but now a second
battleship was gone. It would be too much to ask any one to believe that
this was spontaneous combustion, also! Such things do not happen twice.

And at every station telegrams were handed in giving fresh details of
the disaster--horrible details. The ship was a total loss; of that
splendid mechanism, built by years of toil, by the expenditure of many
millions, there remained only a twisted and useless mass of wreckage;
and in that wreckage lay three hundred of France's sailors. Small wonder
that the President sat, chin in hand, staring straight before him, and
that the others spoke in whispers, or not at all.

At Dijon, which was reached about the middle of the afternoon, there was
a tremendous crowd, thronging the long platforms and pressing against
the barriers, which threatened at every moment to be swept away. The
President went out to say a few words to them, but at the first sentence
his voice failed him, and he could only stand and look down upon them,
convulsive sobs rising in his throat. Suddenly a little red-legged
Turco, weeping too, snatched off his fez and shouted "Vive la France!"
and the cheer was taken up and repeated and repeated, until it swelled
to a vast roar. As the train rolled out of the station, the crowd,
bareheaded, was singing the Marseillaise.

M. Delcasse's eyes, behind his heavy glasses, were wet with tears.

"It is the same people still!" he said, pressing the President's hand.
"They are as ready to spring to arms as they were a hundred years ago.
Now, as then, they need only to know that their country is in danger!"

His voice had grown vibrant with emotion, for the passion of his life
was and always had been revenge upon Germany. He made no effort to
conceal it or to dissimulate. Alsace and Lorraine were always in his
thoughts. To placate Germany,