"Track number 5. Your train leaves at 6.27."
And the train left at 6.27, like any good little train that is on time. It had left quietly; it was almost empty. It had followed the Seine, and I had seen Paris lighted up by the peaceable morning glow, Paris which was still asleep. And I had rubbed my eyes, asking myself if I wasn't dreaming, if I wasn't asleep. Were we really at war? My eyes were seeing nothing of it, but my memory kept recalling the fact. It recalled the unforgettable scenes of those last days—that scene especially, at four o'clock in the evening on the first of August, when the crowd along the boulevard had suddenly seen the mobilization orders posted in the window of a newspaper office. A shout burst forth, a shout I shall hear until my last moment, which made me tremble from the crown of my head to the soles of my feet. It was a shout that seemed to come from the very bowels of the earth, the shout of a people who, for years, had waited for that moment.
Then the "Marseillaise"! Then a short, imperious demand:
"The flags! We want the flags!"
And flags burst forth from all quarters of Paris, decorated in the twinkling of an eye as if it were a fête day. Yes, all that had really happened. All that had taken place. We were really at war.
Little by little the train filled up. It stopped at every station, and at every station men got aboard. They came in gayly and confidently, bidding farewell to the women who had accompanied them and who stayed behind the gate to do their weeping. Everybody was mixed in together in the compartments without any distinctions of rank, station, class or anything else. At Argentan I saw some rough Norman farmers enter the coaches, talking with the same good natured calmness as if they were going away on a business trip. One expression was repeated again and again:
"If we've got to go, we've got to go."
One farmer said:
"They are looking after our good. I shall fight until I fall."
The spirit of the whole French people spoke from these mouths. You felt the firm purpose of the nation come out of the very earth.