Alas! Several hours have passed, and I find that all is not well. The vessels of the “naval army” have their staffs of officers completed, and from hour to hour await the order to put to sea. I was assigned to the Waldeck-Rousseau. At another time I should have been proud to be a part of this splendid vessel. But she is not prepared to leave port. In an accident at sea some months ago, she ripped herself open on the shoals of the Gulf of Juan. The healing of great ships is a tedious affair, and in a repair basin the engineers are still treating her gaping wounds. In reply to my anxious questions, I am told:
“The workmen are busy on her day and night. In six weeks she will take the water again.”
Six weeks! And the other night on the train I saw myself already at sea, my vessel en route for her assigned zone. And now I must be satisfied with a cruiser that will not stir for six weeks!
2 August.
We lived in an atmosphere heated by the sun of Provence. Arriving from Paris as I did, I was questioned. Circles formed, strangers consulted me. In vain did I relate what I had seen in the North, describe my journey on the railway; these listeners only half believed me. In the climate of Provence care disappears; my questioners shook their heads. One regretted his ruined vacation; another doubted my testimony; some of them invoked the prudence of the Powers, and concluded:
“Everything will end in a ‘Congress of Algeciras.’”
Far removed from the vivid Parisian energy, I felt myself overcome by the enervation of Provence. The whole drama of the week took on the guise of nightmare. I was annoyed that the great convulsion, ordered by Fate, seemed once more delayed by man. I reproached my prudent friends for not taking their part in it. Before them the curtain of an epic drama was already rising, and they were not hailing with enthusiastic acclaim the opening of the spectacle. Their mediocre souls were merely taking up again the thread of their daily preoccupations!
Towards two o’clock I cross the threshold of the arsenal gate, to pay the Waldeck-Rousseau my visit of embarkation. The sky is pouring down an avalanche of dusty heat. In such an oven no one can think vigorously. Sprawled against the walls, the arsenal workers are mopping their faces and chests, and, at the end of their tether, are drinking greedily at the roadside bars. Several officers, handkerchiefs in hand, are walking along the rows of plane-trees.
The commander of the Waldeck-Rousseau receives me: