Every moment one comes across similar acts of heroism.
August.—Paul has written to me; I have his letter here. It is just like him, brave boy! Oh, I am sure that he will come back to me!
Old prophecies are being re-published proclaiming the fall of the German Empire. People gather together to read them aloud, and pass them on to their neighbors, like so many thirsty travelers happening on a spring of fresh water.
"Oh, yes! To see the last Prussian at his last gasp, and all due to us. What a glorious sight!" That is what we are all saying to each other in France.
These hordes of barbarians who rob the dead, kill the wounded, and fire on our ambulances; who shoot old men, women, and children, and girls when they have violated them; who cut off little boys' hands, so that they shall not fight against them later on—these monsters who have escaped from Hell will return thither or else there is no Divine justice.
The news of the atrocities committed in Belgium by the Kaiser's monsters emptied the villages in the North in a single night, and one can imagine nothing more dismal than the stream of fugitives along the roads of France. We saw them passing by our houses, coming from goodness knows where, piled up on carts with their animals, their bedding, their old men and their children, and all their household goods.
They had come through Paris, their horses almost dropping with fatigue, to seek a refuge in some friendly district, but where that would be they knew not. For the moment their only idea was to go a long, long way off to the other ends of the earth, in order to escape from the blood-thirsty hordes.
From the North right down to the South of France the roads were covered with thousands of panic-stricken refugees, in carts, in cars, in carriages, in trains, all in the wildest confusion. Many of them camped out all night, in their carts, and quite near the house there were some whom we tried to help a little. The stories they told led us also to think of flight.