I longed and feared to learn what turn things had taken. I questioned a foreman who confided in me:
"You're lucky, you're the last to arrive! To-morrow the system won't be working. It's already cut at Meaux."
They hurried us along the platform, weighed down like human live-stock. On leaving the station we turned into an unlighted avenue, and marched for half an hour or fifty minutes.
The men demanded a halt.
Everyone was so firmly convinced that we were being brought back to rest here. We would have given anything to lie down, if only on bad straw. Our backs were sore all over from those seventy-six hours in the train.
The streets were deserted. At long intervals there was a sentry, or patrol-party. We went on, half dozing. With my head nodding, I urged myself on to certain arguments, which were comparatively reassuring. Don't throw the helve after the hatchet. A besieged town is not a captured town. Paris, in 1870, had held out for more than four months. The defensive works in those days did not approach those of to-day.
Henriot was walking beside me. I unbared my thoughts to him. He retorted:
"Oh rot! They'll get in as easy as look at it!"
"Do you really know anything definite about it?" I asked, a little nonplussed.
"I know as much as everyone else! Nothing's ready. The forts in the west are not worth a pin. They won't hold out any more than those at Namur!"