If Paris had not been at war she would probably have arrested me at the Douane, and I should have deserved it. Fancy insulting her by wearing such clothes, and on such a night—a clear, purple, perfect summer night, when she lay like a fairy city caught in the silvery nets of the moon. And yet there was a strange, ominous hush over it all. The city lying quiet and, oh, so still! It seemed to be waiting, waiting, a cup from which the wine had been poured upon the red floor of war.
Wandering along the deserted quays, wondering what the morrow would bring.... What a night that was, the sheer exquisite beauty of it! The Conciergerie dark against the sky, the gleaming path of the river, and then the Louvre and the Tuileries all hushed to languorous, passionate beauty in the arms of the moon.
Don't you love Paris, every stone of her? I do. But I was not allowed to stay there. Inexorable Fate sent me the next morning in a taxi and a state of excusable excitement to the Gare de l'Est, where, kit-bag, mess-tin, water-bottle and all, I was immured in the Paris-Nancy express and borne away through a morning of glittering sunshine to Vitry-le-François, there to be deposited upon the platform and in the arms of a grey-coated and becomingly-expectant young man.
[CHAPTER II]
EN ROUTE—SERMAIZE-LES-BAINS
I
Like Bartley Fallon of immortal memory, "if there's any ill luck at all in the world, 'tis on meself it falls." Needless to say, I was not allowed to remain in the arms of that nice young man; and indeed, to give him his due, he showed no overwhelming desire to keep me there. The embodiment of all Quakerly propriety, he conducted me with befitting ceremony to the station just as the sun began to drop down the long hills of the sky, and sent me forth once more, this time with a ticket for Sermaize-les-Bains in my pocket. My proverbial luck held good—that is to say, bad. The train was an Omnibus. Do you know what that means? No? Then I shall tell you. It is the philosopher of locomotion, the last thing in, the final triumph of, thoughtful, leisurely progression. Its phlegm is sheerly imperturbable, its serenity of that large-souled order which cataclysms cannot ruffle nor revolutions disturb. A destination? It shrugs its shoulder. Yes, somewhere, across illimitable continents, across incalculable æons of time. The world is beautiful, haste the expression of a vulgar age. To travel hopefully is to arrive. It hopes. Eventually, if God is good, it arrives.
And so did we, after long consultative visits to small wayside stations, and after much meditative meandering through sunset-coloured lands. Arrived—ah, can you wonder at it?—with just a little catch in our throats and a shamed mistiness of vision, for had we not seen, there in that little clump of undergrowth outside the wood, a lonely cross, fenced with a rustic paling, an old red mouldering képi hanging on the point? And then in the field another ... and again another
... mute, pitiful, inspiring witnesses of the grim
tragedy of war.