ould be responsible for myself. I could not bear to have to
feel any responsibility for others in case I was wrong. But she assured
me that her mother had been of my opinion from the first. "Only," she
added, "if I could have coaxed you to go, she would have gone too."

This decision did not add much to my peace of mind all that long Sunday.
It seems impossible that it was only day before yesterday. I think the
suspense was harder to bear than that of the day before, though all we
could see of the battle were the dense clouds of smoke rising straight
into the air behind the green hill under such a blue sky all aglow with
sunshine, with the incessant booming of the cannon, which made the
contrasts simply monstrous.

I remember that it was about four in the afternoon when I was sitting in
the arbor under the crimson rambler, which was a glory of bloom, that
Pere came and stood near by on the lawn, looking off. With his hands in
the pockets of his blue apron, he stood silent for a long time. Then he
said, "Listen to that. They are determined to pass. This is different
from 1870. In 1870 the Germans marched through here with their guns on
their shoulders. There was no one to oppose them. This time it is
different. It was harvest-time that year, and they took everything, and
destroyed what they did not take. They bedded their horses in the
wheat."

You see Pere's father was in the Franco-Prussian War, and his
grandfather was with Napoleon at Moscow, where he had his feet frozen.
Pere is over seventy, and his father died at ninety-six. Poor old Pere
just hates the war. He is as timid as a bird--can't kill a rabbit for
his dinner. But with the queer spirit of the French farmer he has kept
right on working as if nothing were going on. All day Saturday and all
day Sunday he was busy digging stone to mend the road.

The cannonading ceased a little after six--thirteen hours without
intermission. I don't mind confessing to you that I hope the war is not
going to give me many more days like that one. I'd rather the battle
would come right along and be done with it. The suspense of waiting all
day for that battery at Coutevroult to open fire was simply nasty.

I went to bed as ignorant of how the battle had turned as I was the
night before. Oddly enough, to my surprise, I slept, and slept well.

XV

September 8, 1914.

I did not wake on the morning of Monday, September 7,--
yesterday,--until I was