She rose, took the cups from my hands, and rehung them on the wall.
How do they live, I wondered, as I passed out and over the fields? How do these mothers keep their reason, who have seen their daughters taken into a captivity upon which shuts down a silence deep as death? One understands the comment of Mme. Charles Thuillard, who in spite of her sharp tongue has a most human heart. She was showing me the picture of her daughter one day; an enlargement such as all the world makes of its dead. “Thank God,” she said, “she was happy; she died before the war.”
CHAPTER XI
LES PETITS SOLDATS
Ou t’en vas-tu, soldat de France,
Tout equipé, prêt au combat,
Ou t’en vas-tu, petit soldat?
C’est comme il plaît à la Patrie,
Je n’ai qu’ à suivre les tambours.