Led westward by a Grand Duke, marching Russia bent several million reverent heads, awed by this stroke of autocratic genius, and somebody named a brand of caviar after the Czar of all the Russias. Which holy tribute, however, built no strategic railroads in the West.
Meanwhile, the spinning world swung on around its orbit; tides rose and ebbed; the twin sentinels of the skies relieved each other as usual, and a few billion stars waited patiently for eternity.
Ausone, lying in the sun, was waiting, too, amid its still trees and ripening fields.
In the summer world around, no hint of impending change disturbed the calm serenity of that August afternoon—no sense of waiting, no prophecy of gathering storms. But in men's hearts reigned the breathless stillness which heralds tempests.
Silently as a kestrel's shadow gliding over the grass, an ominous shade sped over sunny France, darkening the light in millions of smiling eyes, subduing speech, stilling all pulses, cautioning a nation's ardent heart and conjuring its ears to listen and its lips to silence.
And, as France sat silent, listening, hand lightly resting on her hilt, came the far cry from beyond the Vosges—the voices of her lost children.
Now she had risen to her feet, loosening the blade in its scabbard. But she had not yet drawn it; she still stood listening to the distant shots from Longwy in the north, to the noise of the western winds blowing across the channel; and always she heard, from the east, the lost voices of her best beloved, calling, calling her from beyond the Vosges.
As they approached Ausone, driving full speed, Warner and Halkett encountered the Saïs omnibus returning, and drew rein.
In it was the Harem, much annoyed because not permitted to sketch in the Ausone streets.
They had seen nothing of any touring car containing several men and a young girl. That did not interest them. What preoccupied their minds was that they had been sketching in the streets of Ausone, and had been politely requested to desist by several unappreciative policemen. So they had collectively shaken the dust of Ausone from their several and indignant feet, and were now en route to Saïs to paint hay stacks.