But it was necessary to pack. I fulfilled this task with such mechanical precision that it calmed me. When I had finished I went out on to the balcony again in my shirt sleeves.
A crescent moon had just risen. A green mountain-side opposite me, at the other side of the cutting which terminated, I imagined, in the ravaged gorges of the Orbe, was bathed in her light. Vaguely phosphorescent fields lay soaked in a milky whiteness. Spreading brown forests quivered softly. Half-way up fires were shining, the factory and station at Brassus. I admired the bold sweep and the contour of the Dent de Vaulion on the right. Farther on in the distance a series of mountain ridges, forming a circle, were indicated, bluish and pale beneath the halo.
My brow was cooling again. In the contemplation of this veiled and unreal scene my thoughts insensibly freed themselves of sinister obsessions.
What made me call to mind a very insignificant incident in this day fertile in shocks, that moment on the road when I had passed in review the joys for which I lived? The obscure feeling of distress which had made me stop talking recaptured me. I again experienced the sensation that everything was dismal, but at the same time was there not something which might be called an unexpected hope rising within me? What hope? I caught it, and questioned it. Was it not of new days when I should perhaps shake myself free of the torpor where I languished?
Halloa! I jeered. Was I too lending a hand in the resurrection of the warlike instinct legitimate in the son of the soldier who was in the charge at Rezônville, in the grandson of the man who had commanded a regiment at Magenta? No, no: I acquitted myself of that; such wild intoxication was quite alien to me. The most I might admit was that my eyes were fixed on the future with a greater interest, that curiosity made my resignation easier.
I let my imagination run away with me. Turning successively towards the two horizons, I imagined I saw, beyond the mountains, the vastness of the two hostile territories where since to-night so many forces were being lavished in the elaboration of the battles where they would devour each other to-morrow; a gigantic sheaf of hatred and lust, but also of devotion and heroism which had just burst into flame!
Midnight struck. My exaltation dwindled; at all events, I was not sorry, I thought, to have been equal to the emergency if only for a moment.
I went down to give the hall-porter orders to wake me at five o'clock, he was to have my bill ready, and I should expect a cab to be there for my luggage. In crossing the lounge I came upon the three Englishmen who were leaving the card-room. We had never exchanged a word, or a nod; I thought them ignorant of our language. I was going straight past them, when the one who was walking in front, a big, fair man, who looked an athlete in his smoking-jacket, stopped right in front of me.
"Good luck to your country, sir," he said.
"Thank you."