Then she sat down and sighed. "Ah," she said, "war, after all, it's more terrible than one imagines."
She seemed to be having tragic presentiments. Her face was paler than usual; the normal lassitude of her features was full of gentleness; her eyelids were rosy as roses. Then she smiled weakly and said, "There are some young men of eighteen who've enlisted, but only for the duration of the war. They've done right; that'll be useful to them all ways later in life."
* * * * * *
On Monday we hung about the house till four o'clock, when I left it to go to the Town Hall, and then to the station.
At the Town Hall a group of men, like myself, were stamping about. They were loaded with parcels in string; new boots hung from their shoulders. I went up to mix with my new companions. Tudor was topped by an artilleryman's cap. Monsieur Mielvaque was bustling about, embarrassed—exactly as at the factory—by the papers he held in his hand; and he had exchanged his eyeglasses for spectacles, which stood for the beginning of his uniform. Every man talked about himself, and gave details concerning his regiment, his depot, and some personal peculiarity.
"I'm staying," says the adjutant master-at-arms, who rises impeccably in his active service uniform, amid the bustle and the neutral-tinted groups; "I'm not going. I'm the owner of my rank, and they haven't got the right to send me to join the army."
We waited long, and some hours went by. A rumor went round that we should not go till the next day. But suddenly there was silence, a stiffening up, and a military salute all round. The door had just opened to admit Major de Trancheaux.
The women drew aside. A civilian who was on the lookout for him went up, hat in hand, and spoke to him in undertones.
"But, my friend," cried the Major, quitting the importunate with a quite military abruptness, "it's not worth while. In two months the war will be over!"
He came up to us. He was wearing a white band on his cap.