ews went by
in us. In the streets, the garrison officers walked, grown taller,
disclosed. It was announced that Major de Trancheaux had rejoined, in
spite of his years, and that the German armies had attacked us in three
places at once. We cursed the Kaiser and rejoiced in his imminent
chastisement. In the middle of it all France appeared personified, and
we reflected on her great life, now suddenly and nakedly exposed.

"It was easy to foresee this war, eh?" said Crillon.

Monsieur Joseph Boneas summarized the world-drama. We were all pacific
to the point of stupidity--little saints, in fact. No one in France
spoke any longer of revenge, nobody wished it, nobody thought of as
much as getting ready for war. We had all of us in our hearts only
dreams of universal happiness and progress, the while Germany secretly
prepared everything for hurling herself on us. "But," he added, he
also carried away, "she'll get it in the neck, and that's all about
it!"

The desire for glory was making its way, and one cloudily imagines
Napoleon reborn.

In these days, only the mornings and evenings returned as usual,
everything else was upside down, and seemed temporary. The workers
moved and talked in a desert of idleness, and one saw invisible changes
in the scenery of our valley and the cavity of our sky.

We saw the Cuirassiers of the garrison go away in the evening. The
massive platoons of young-faced horsemen, whose solemn obstruction
heavily hammered the stones of the street, were separated by horses
loaded with bales of forage, by regimental wagons and baggage-carts,
which rattled unendingly. We formed a hedgerow along the twilight
causeways and watched them all disappear. Suddenly we cheered them.
The thrill that went through horses and men straightened them up and
they went away bigger--as if they were coming back!

"It's magnificent, how warlike we are in France!" said fevered Marie,
squeezing my arm with all her might.

The departures, of individuals or groups, multiplied. A sort of
methodical and inevitable tree-blazing--conducted sometimes by the
police--ransacked the population and thinned it from day to day around
the women.

Increasing hurly-burly was everywhere--all the complicated measures so
prudently foreseen and so interdependent; the new posters on top of the
old ones, the requisitioning of animals and places, the committees and
the allowances, the booming and momentous gales of motor-cars fill