I could bear another one, if only it gave Alsace and Lorraine
back to us--us meaning me and France. France really deserves her
revenge for the humiliation of 1870 and that beastly Treaty of
Frankfort. I don't deny that 1870 was the making of modern France, or
that, since the Treaty of Frankfort, as a nation she has learned a
lesson of patience that she sorely needed. But now that Germany is
preparing--is really prepared to attack her again--well, the very hair
on my head rises up at the idea. There have been times in the last ten
years when I have firmly believed that she could not be conquered again.
But Germany! Well, I don't know. If she is, it will not be for lack of
nerve or character. Still, it is no secret that she is not ready, or
that the anti-military party is strong,--and with that awful Caillaux
affair; I swore to myself that nothing should tempt me to speak of it.
It has been so disgraceful. Still, it is so in the air just now that it
has to be recognized as pitifully significant and very menacing to
political unity.

The tension here is terrible. Still, the faces of the men are stern,
and every one is so calm--the silence is deadly. There is an absolute
suspension of work in the fields. It is as if all France was holding
its breath.

One word before I forget it again. You say that you have asked me twice
if I have any friend near me. I am sure I have already answered
that--yes! I have a family of friends at Voulangis, about two miles the
other side of Crecy-en-Brie. Of course neighbors do not see one another
in the country as often as in the city, but there they are; so I hasten
to relieve your mind just now, when there is a menace of war, and I am
sitting tight on my hilltop on the road to the frontier.

VI

August 2, 1914.

Well, dear, what looked impossible is evidently coming to pass.

Early yesterday morning the garde champetre--who is the only thing in
the way of a policeman that we have--marched up the road beating his
drum. At every crossroad he stopped and read an order. I heard him at
the foot of the hill, but I waited for him to pass. At the top of the
hill he stopped to paste a bill on the door of the carriage-house on
Pere Abelard's farm. You can imagine me,--in my long studio apron, with
my head tied up in a muslin cap,--running up the hill to join the group
of poor women of the hamlet, to read the proclamation to the armies of
land and sea--the order for th