‘Toute ensemble déferle sur le rivage de la mer.
‘Ainsi une génération, une promotion, est une vague d’hommes.
‘Tout ensemble elle s’avance sur un même front.
‘Et toute ensemble elle s’écroule comme une muraille d’eau quand elle touche au rivage éternel.’
Thus Péguy died with the generation that he led to victory.[1]
FOOTNOTES:
[1] I refer those of my readers, who wish to learn more of Péguy, to my friend Daniel Halévy’s volume: Charles Péguy et les Cahiers de la Quinzaine, Payot et Cie, Paris, 1919.
ERNEST PSICHARI
I think that Péguy never learned the death of his young friend, Ernest Psichari; for the retreat of Charleroi was, after all, such a little while before the battle of the Marne, and news in those difficult days travelled so slowly.... One of Péguy’s last preoccupations was the hope of meeting Ernest on the road to battle, and in fact they must have been in Lorraine together, but no chance encounter by road or rail set the two friends face to face. They both started for the front in the same mood of heroic exaltation:—