"Very," he assured me. "You'll soon see!"
I objected diffidently.
"At first sight...."
"Well?"
"There's rather a lack of enthusiasm."
"Enthusiasm? It was not wanting in the year '70! They didn't know then what a real war was. They've learnt. In '71 in January, we saw what was left of Bourbaki's army pass by, dying of hunger and cold in the snow. We know what beaten men are, and that we must not be of their number. They aren't going out of light-heartedness, but they'll go on till death!"
My place was laid. We dined. The doctor was grave and silent, and I feeble and dull. My cousin was the only one to talk, and she overflowed with lukewarm lamentations. What bad-luck that Geneviève should have gone back to Belfort just a week before. Would she be able to come back?
I reassured her by saying that women and children would certainly be ejected. But her son-in-law, the Captain? His fate did not seem to worry her much. I remarked that he was in the first line, much exposed.