"You are to go away."
"Away? Ah, God, where?"
"Oh, to Germany, and then to Morocco."
The poor wretches, believing them, were filled with infinite grief and dismay. They were crowded into wagons and driven to Longuyon, herded there like cattle for sixteen days, and finally taken through Germany into Switzerland and thence into France. In Germany women wearing Red Cross badges gave them food, treating them well; at the Swiss frontier they were rigorously searched, a man who had one hundred and fifty francs in German gold being given paper money instead, and losing, if Madame Breda was correctly informed, thirty-six francs on the exchange.
At Annemasse there is a Bureau des Réfugiés so splendidly organised that repatriés can be put into immediate touch with their relatives, no mean feat when you think of the dismemberment of Northern France.
So behold Madame Breda joyfully telegraphing to Madame Lassanne, and the latter waiting at the station with tears raining down her face, and limbs trembling so much they refused to support her!
Poor soul! The end of her calvary was not yet. Roger did not know her. And his nerves had been so much affected by what he, baby though he was, had gone through that for weeks he hid his face in his grandmother's arms and screamed when his mother tried to kiss him. Screamed, too, at sudden noises, at the approach of any stranger, or at sight of a brightly-lighted room. No wonder he howled at the uniform.
And old Madame Breda, staunch, loyal thing that she was, had been too sorely tried. The long strain, the months of haunting anxiety and dread had eaten away her strength, and soon after coming to Bar she sank quietly to rest.
She talked to me of Carignan once or twice, saying it was a vast training-camp for German recruits, mere boys (des vrais gosses), few over seventeen years of age.
Once a French aviator, hovering over the town, was obliged to descend owing to some engine trouble. He was caught, tried as a spy and condemned to death. Asking for a French priest to hear his last confession, he was told it could not be permitted. A German ministered to him instead (what a refinement of cruelty!), and remaining with him to the end, declared afterwards that he died "comme un héros, un Chrétien, et un brave."