There were no details, of course.
The detachment had left F——, Langlois continued, at midday on the 29th,—the Paris dailies had just arrived.
This time there was a communiqué which was undeniably odd. Even he had been startled. He quoted the exact text: "The situation on our front, from the Somme to the Vosges, is exactly the same to-day as it was yesterday."
From the Somme to the Vosges! It was my turn to get a shock. What! Then the Huns were at Amiens! Yes, everything went to prove it. Even nearer perhaps? They had heard a rumour on their train journey, of sanguinary engagements at Bapaume and at Peronne. Other reports were circulating. Soisson and St. Quentin were said to have been cut off, the Compiègne forest on fire.
I would not believe it all. I clung to the communiqué of the 27th. But in any case it was a terrible awakening. Even Guillaumin, who joined us, was not incredulous, for once. An orderly had just confirmed the news of the investment of La Fère. We put this fortress down as being about half-way between the frontier and Paris. Was the capital in danger? Not yet, after all! We pictured a huge force barring the way to the intrenched camp.
What worried me most was public opinion which, with us, is so nervous and impressionable. There was good reason to be calm about the morale of the army. But the departments in the background. We were given a gloomy reflection of the spirit reigning there now....
And the government especially? I had a vague dread of some faltering, some lack of real energy in this coterie of middle-aged bourgeois, who had grown up amid the dejection which had followed the defeat, and had been softened by forty years of enjoyable egoism. Would they hold out? What did we know of it? We had got no more letters since the game had been played and lost in the North.
Certain facts which I learnt from Langlois were not calculated to reassure me. The cabinet had been modified! Socialists in the Ministry. If it should mean the road to some humiliating pact? There was still a fear of civil war, in which France would drown herself in a fratricidal struggle or, worse than all else, fling herself into the arms of the infamous wretch who would speak of peace!
I kept my anxiety to myself in my continuous endeavour not to shake any one's courage. I watched my poilus with delight as they exerted themselves to cheer up the new-comers. The Judsis and Lamalous laughed at their glum looks.