"Yes my son, but we must be also submissive. We must not fix in our prayers the stubbornness of expectation. What comes we must accept as the work of God. There can be no reservations in our acknowledgment of the immediate and uninterrupted immanence of the divine POWER. Let us simply trust."
I murmured disheartedly:
Ici tout meurt, la fleur, l'été,
La jeunesse et la vie.
The good man pressed my hands, and as we drew near to the lights in the station I saw his pained and overflowing eyes.
I came into Paris at the Gare d'Orsay on August first. Mobilization began the next day and when I reached the Place de l'Opéra crowds of young men were marching in the streets, crying, almost shrieking, "Vive la France." Girls along the balconies and from the windows showered flowers on them. In other streets groups of young men were singing the Marseillaise, and waving the flags of France and Russia and England. It was fiercely exciting, and when at last my eagerness broke all restraint I joined some of them—my limp was no hindrance there—and almost forgot my destination, drinking in the elixir of patriotism for a few delirious moments.
It was the next day (August third) that I hurried to my publisher's—Avenue de l'Alma—and found him with his family about him, disordered in dress, and dismally grave. It was M. Albert Yvette. He welcomed me with effusion, and resolved to take me to the Chamber of Deputies where the premier M. Viviani would speak on the situation. That would be the next day, and for the moment we would go over some copy as a temporary distraction from the mind-blighting crisis which had overcome the country. M. Yvette had four sons, two of whom had already joined the colors, and three exquisite daughters, two young girls, and the third a married woman, who in this extremity had united her family with her father's, and added to his own overflowing famille three boys—joufflus et bruants—so that there was no lack of excitement; conversation and predictions too.
On August first Jaures the socialist leader had been assassinated, and yet this monstrous assault failed to arouse national dissension. Yvette said it was significant. France was as one man and an undivided nation would frustrate the enemy.
We all agreed, but the coming test promised to be a severe one. The news that came in from the advancing Germans was not welcome, and showed the organization of a powerful attack. Yvette was confident that even the "spray," as he termed it, of the Teutonic wave would not reach us. I did not think so. Paris was in danger. Madame Yvette became tremulous and the daughters were in tears. Then came the news, flashed through the streets as if by a magnetic sympathy, answering the popular suspense, that England had declared war upon Germany. This was most cheering, and the days before France seemed less threatening.