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 filled with officers and aristocratic nurses—so many lives turned inside out and habits cut in two. But hope bedazzled all anxieties and stopped up the gaps for the moment. And we admired the beauty of military orderliness and France's preparation.
Sometimes, at windows or street-corners, there were apparitions—people covered with new uniforms. We had known them in vain, and did not know them at first. Count d'Orchamp, lieutenant in the Active Reserves, and Dr. Bardoux, town-major, displaying the cross of the Legion of Honor, found themselves surrounded by respectful astonishment. Adjutant Marcassin rose suddenly to the eyes as though he had come out of the earth; Marcassin, brand-new, rigid, in blue and red, with his gold stripe. One saw him afar, fascinating the groups of urchins who a week ago threw stones at him.
"The old lot—the little ones, and the middling ones and the big ones—all getting new clothes!" says a triumphant woman of the people.
Another said it was the coming of a new reign.
* * * * * *
From the Friday onwards I was engrossed by my own departure. It was that day that we went to buy boots. We admired the beautiful arrangement of the Cinema Hall as a Red Cross hospital.