Neeland had undressed, bathed his somewhat battered body, and had then thrown himself on the bed, fully intending to rise in a few moments and await breakfast.
But it was a very weary young man who stretched himself out for ten minutes’ repose. And, when again he unclosed his eyes, the austere clock on the mantel informed him that it was five—not five in the morning either.
He had slept through the first day of general mobilisation.
Across the lowered latticed blinds late afternoon sunshine struck red. The crests of the chestnut trees in the rue Soleil d’Or had turned rosy; and a delicate mauve sky, so characteristic of Paris in early autumn, already stretched above the city like a frail tent of silk from which fragile cobweb clouds hung, tinted with saffron and palest rose.
Hoisting the latteen shades, he looked out through lace curtains into the most silent city he had ever beheld. Not that the streets and avenues were deserted: they swarmed with hurrying, silent people and with taxicabs.
Never had he seen so many taxicabs; they streamed by everywhere, rushing at high speed. They passed through the rue Soleil d’Or; the rue de la Lune fairly 411 whizzed with them; the splendid avenue was merely a vista of flying taxis; and in every one of them there was a soldier.
Otherwise, except for cyclists, there seemed to be very few soldiers in Paris—an odd fact immediately noticeable.
Also there were no omnibuses to be seen, no private automobiles, no electric vehicles of any sort except great grey army trucks trundling by with a sapper at the wheel.
And, except for the whiz and rush of the motors and the melancholy siren blasts from their horns, an immense silence reigned in the streets.
There was no laughter to be heard, no loud calling, no gay and animated badinage. People who met and stopped conversed in undertones; gestures were sober and rare.