I had a very good cup of tea and then went out and hired a cab by the hour, as I had a letter to the Préfet from M. Joseph Reinach and also wanted to see something of the town. At the Bureau de Place an imposing official read my carnet rouge, looked at my picture and record on the first page, and then turned to me with narrowed eyelids. I drew a short breath and shifted from one foot to the other. Frenchmen have very keen eyes and when they half close them you feel as if blinking aside a knife-blade. If I had had a guilty secret during that trip into the war zone I should have given it up. Indeed, so often did I encounter this glance that I began to wonder uneasily if there were not something wrong with me, if there were not depths of treachery in me that I so far had not suspected, if I really had not in some moment of aberration committed a wrong against France. Such is the power of suggestion, of moving constantly in an atmosphere of suspicion. But I reminded myself that I had heard a few days since that there was a price on my head in Germany, and took courage.
“What had I come to the war zone for?” “To visit the base hospitals.” “Ah?” “No, I was not a nurse. I was inspecting in behalf of my oeuvre, Le Bienêtre du Blessé. I was also writing a book about the women of France in war time.” “Ah!” Again that steel blade between narrowed lids. I bethought me of the letter from the Minister of War. The atmosphere cleared as by magic. My carnet rouge was stamped, and I was bowed out not only with the politeness to which I was accustomed, but with frank pleasant eyes, wide open, and some practical information regarding the formalities of departure.
After I had called on the Préfet and driven about the gray, silent, shuttered town, and seen practically no evidences of life but hundreds of army wagons (there are trenches just outside of the town, but no permit would take me there), I wondered what I was to do with myself until the morrow. My object in stopping at Châlons was to make it a headquarters from which I could visit the other towns, but this, I had found, was impossible; I could go nowhere that day and return for the night. It was only 3:30. I had no intention of visiting the hospitals at Châlons, as there were two at Bar-le-Duc to which I had personal letters. I told the coachman to drive to the shopping street, if there was such a thing. He drove to a street in which there were a few shops. In one I found a Dumas novel and bought it—“Le Collier de la Reine!” Then I went back to the hotel and once more interviewed the young lady at the desk. She was still reading the novel, but condescended to inspect my carnet rouge and to give me her own permission to pass the night in the hotel. I could not have a front room, however; they were all taken by officers. She rang her bell, and a servant escorted me across the court, which contained a stable under one side of the hotel, and up a rickety staircase to a sombre room on the first floor. I immediately inspected the bed—I had brought a bottle of turpentine—but the maid announced with pride that the sheets were washed after every guest and that the hotel was famous for its neatness. I asked her if the natural color of the blanket was gray, and she nodded with a reassuring smile. The linen certainly was clean, and, as a matter of fact, the turpentine was supererogatory. However, I still harbor doubts about the blankets.
What was I to do in this war town seventeen kilometers from the soundless front (I had been told that when Verdun was thundering people rocked in their beds)? It was too hot to walk and there was nothing more to see. There was, indeed, no resource but the necklace of Marie Antoinette.
The room was dark, with a window in one corner. I carried the least uncomfortable chair to this window, and there, amid the silences of the tomb and the aromas of the stable, I read a story of 1784. This was the war zone which it took weeks of plotting and the most powerful influences to reach.
However, there was still the morrow and Bar-le-Duc.
HORRORS OF THE HOTEL LIFE IN THE WAR ZONE
PARIS, August 8.
