He stood for a moment by his window looking down over the plateau and across the valley of the Récollette.
Everywhere cavalry, infantry, artillery, baggage trains, automobiles, bicycles, motor cycles were moving slowly eastward into the blazing eye of the rising sun and vanishing within its blinding glory.
Two French aëroplanes had taken the air. They came soaring over the valley from the plateau, filling the air with the high clatter of their machinery; pale green ribbons of smoke fell from them, uncoiling like thin strips of silk against the sky; flag signals were being exchanged between officers gathered on the terrace below and a group of soldiers at the head of the nearest pontoon across the river.
Poles supporting field telephone and telegraph wires stretched across the lawn, running south toward the lodge gate. Another line ran east, another west.
Parked on the lawn were a dozen big automobiles, the chauffeurs at the wheels, the engines running. Behind these, soldier cyclists and motor cyclists sat cross-legged by their machines, exchanging gossip with a squadron of hussars drawn up on the other side of the drive.
There were no tents visible anywhere, but everywhere in the open soldiers were erecting odd-looking skeleton shelters and covering them with freshly cut green boughs from the woods. Under one of these an automobile was already standing, and under others hussars stood to horse.
Across the rolling country, stretching over valley and plateau, the face of the green and golden earth was striped, as though some giant plow had turned furrows at random here and there, some widely separated from the rest, others parallel and within a few yards of one another. A few dark figures appeared along these furrows of raw earth, moved about, disappeared. It was evident that the trenches of these prepared positions were still in process of construction, for carts were being driven to and from them and men were visible working near some of them.
Warner had completed his toilet when a maid brought café-au-lait. He ate, listening to the grumble of the northern cannonade and watching the movement of the columns along dry roads, where unbroken walls of dust marked every route, seen or unseen, across the vast green panorama.
He had finished breakfast and was lighting a cigarette in preparation for descending to the terrace, when the noise of an altercation arose directly under his window; and, looking out, he beheld Asticot in dispute with the sentry stationed there, loudly insisting that he was a servant of the establishment, and demanding free entry with every symptom of virtuous indignation.
He was a sight; his face and hands were smeared with black—charcoal, it looked like—his clothes were muddy and full of briers, his beloved lovelocks, no longer plastered in demicurls over each cheekbone, dangled dankly beside his large, wide ears.