"Where are the Germans? Will they come here? What ought we to do?"
A long conversation ensued. Alas, our guests were as pessimistic as could be. The head major, a small man, thick-set, energetic, and dark, did not hide from us the truth that we should see the Germans, and, still worse, that they would lay siege to Paris. Grief and indignation prevented us from looking at our own situation; we thought but of the country itself.
"Why," Geneviève cried out, "you think the Germans will conquer us! You are expecting another '70?"
"Never! never! The Germans will be beaten. Should they go to Marseilles and Bordeaux, I should still believe in their final defeat, but the moment is a critical one. We have been beaten; it is a certain fact; there is no use being blind to it, and the Germans will go to Paris."
A clear voice rose at the end of the table:
"You talk as if we were lost," Colette said. "We are retreating? It may be a wise measure. Our men are ready for anything. The Germans in Paris!—but you do not know our soldiers!"
"Very good," said the neighbour of Colette, a tall, fair-haired man. "Do try to convince my friends; these ten days I have dinned the same arguments into their ears. But you must excuse our despondency; weariness is the cause of it; these last three weeks we have hardly slept. And what do we see of war? Nothing that is not horrible and disheartening—battle-fields after the fight, the dead, the wounded, the stragglers—nothing that elevates, and idealises men."
So the talk went on, and the dining-room rang with the praises the doctors bestowed on their heroic patients. They spoke chiefly of the terrible weariness of the men.
"They are overcome with sleep," they said, "and to such an extent that they don't wake up, even when we dress their wounds."
A few minutes after, Colette said to her neighbour: