Thanks to the horse which one of Lieutenant de Coigny's dragoons had given up to me I reached Audun-le-Roman about seven o'clock. There a car was immediately requisitioned, and I was taken to Nancy.
I had expected that mobilization would already have been ordered in France. But nothing had been done, and my mind became obsessed by the memory of the tremendous preparations I had witnessed that night, preparations which removed any lingering doubt.
We went straight to the Prefecture, and I was taken before the Prefect. I told him as fully as possible everything I had seen and heard. He listened to me with the closest attention, taking notes. When I left him he was already telephoning to Paris the information I had given him.
I wandered about in the streets of Nancy, as my train was not leaving until twelve midday.
Too harassed and excited to rest, I went into a café in the Place Stanislas. When I put my hand in my pocket to pay I drew out the note-case which Aurora had put there. I had never felt so well off as at that moment when money, once the most coveted of possessions, seemed to have lost all value for me.
I walked in a main street and stopped, all unconsciously, at a shop. I went in and bought the clothes you see me in now. I was so stupefied that I didn't even notice that for field service the blue tunic had taken the place of the old black tunic with red collar.
At midday the train started for Paris. For the first time I saw all those places that the retreat has engraved on our minds: Dormans, with its bridge that we crossed on September 2nd in the added gloom of the anniversary of Sedan; the lovely Jaulgonne road down which we chased the enemy; Château-Thierry on the Marne, with its ruined castle perched up on high, where we slept in a bed for the first time.
It was twenty minutes past five when the train drew up in Château-Thierry station. There I learned the news of the general mobilization. The wall of fire and steel which separated me from my beloved sovereign of Lautenburg had at last been raised.
The atmosphere was heavy and thunderous when I got out at the Gare de l'Est, but the great city of Paris was calm. Oh, Paris, once I had feared so much for you when this terrible moment should come; your excitability, your fits of passion, your very ardour, which might be treason's opportunity. And now the hour had come and not even assassination had shaken your quiet resolution, the assassination of the man who had boasted that he could start or stop revolution at his will.
My mobilization orders had disappeared in the fire at the castle of Lautenburg, but that didn't worry me much. I knew them by heart and decided to leave next morning to rejoin the 18th Infantry at Pau.