CHAPTER III
Chérie's Diary
This is August the 1st. In three days I shall be eighteen. At eighteen one is grown up; one pins up one's hair, and one may use perfume on one's handkerchief and think of whom one is going to love.
The weather is very hot.
Cécile tells me that she saw Florian Audet ride past this morning; he was at the head of his company of Lancers, and looked very straight and handsome and stern; like Lohengrin, she said. I do not suppose he will remember my birthday with all this excitement about manœuvres and mobilizing.
There is no news at all about Amour. We are very unhappy about him.
Later.—Claude has written to say that he is ordered to Mons and that there may be an invasion, and that whatever happens we are all to be brave. We were not at all frightened until we read that; but now of course we are terrified out of our wits. Every time the bell rings we think it is the enemy and we scream. (Motto—to remember. It is better never to tell any one to be brave because it makes them frightened.)
August 2nd.—It is very hot again today. We wished we were in Westende. How nice it was there, bicycling on the sand in one's bathing dress! One day I rode all the way to the Yser and back. The Yser is a pretty blue canal and a man with a boat ferries you across for ten centimes to Nieuport. Of course that day I did not want to go to Nieuport because I was in my bathing dress; besides, I had no pocket and therefore no money.
I do not seem to write very important things in this diary; my brother Claude gave it me and said I was not to fill it with futile nonsense. But nothing really important ever happens.