At each station, as the train rolled on, great crowds gathered to meet it—crowds strangely silent, inarticulate with grief, furious, suspicious of they knew not what. Terrible rumours were abroad—rumours of treachery, of treason striking at the very heart of France. No one dared repeat these rumours, but nevertheless they ran up and down the land. The Jena and now the Liberté! True, the Board of Inquiry, which had investigated the destruction of the Jena, had decided that that catastrophe was due to the spontaneous combustion of the powder in her magazines. France had accepted the verdict; but now a second battleship was gone. It would be too much to ask any one to believe that this was spontaneous combustion, also! Such things do not happen twice.
And at every station telegrams were handed in giving fresh details of the disaster—horrible details. The ship was a total loss; of that splendid mechanism, built by years of toil, by the expenditure of many millions, there remained only a twisted and useless mass of wreckage; and in that wreckage lay three hundred of France's sailors. Small wonder that the President sat, chin in hand, staring straight before him, and that the others spoke in whispers, or not at all.
At Dijon, which was reached about the middle of the afternoon, there was a tremendous crowd, thronging the long platforms and pressing against the barriers, which threatened at every moment to be swept away. The President went out to say a few words to them, but at the first sentence his voice failed him, and he could only stand and look down upon them, convulsive sobs rising in his throat. Suddenly a little red-legged Turco, weeping too, snatched off his fez and shouted "Vive la France!" and the cheer was taken up and repeated and repeated, until it swelled to a vast roar. As the train rolled out of the station, the crowd, bareheaded, was singing the Marseillaise.
M. Delcassé's eyes, behind his heavy glasses, were wet with tears.
"It is the same people still!" he said, pressing the President's hand. "They are as ready to spring to arms as they were a hundred years ago. Now, as then, they need only to know that their country is in danger!"
His voice had grown vibrant with emotion, for the passion of his life was and always had been revenge upon Germany. He made no effort to conceal it or to dissimulate. Alsace and Lorraine were always in his thoughts. To placate Germany, indeed, France had once been compelled to drive him from the Quai d'Orsay, where, for so many years, he had been to his contemporaries a sort of Olympian in the conduct of her foreign affairs. But even in retirement he remained the most powerful man in France; and now he was back in the cabinet again, a giant among Lilliputians, building up the navy, building up the army, strengthening the forts along the frontier, increasing the efficiency of the artillery, experimenting with air-ships, devoting his days and nights to the study of strategy, the discussion of possibilities, always with the same idea, the same hope! And now, this catastrophe!
As he sat gnawing his nails, the President glanced at him, read his thoughts, and shook his head.
"No, my friend," he said, sadly, "the country is not in danger; or, if it is, the danger is from within, not from without. This is an accident, like all the others."
"You believe so? But it seems to me that we have had more than our share of accidents!"
"So we have," the President agreed. "Let us hope that this will be the last—that it will teach us to guard ourselves, in future, from our own carelessness."