On the edge of the forest of Orleans we stopped for more than an hour. By this time it was night, but the moon was shining. Another train had also drawn up, and in the moonlight, the two trains looked like long funeral processions.
The Master had not spoken since we left. With my face in my hands I was crying, and there was complete silence in the compartment. All of a sudden the most exquisite song rose on the tragic night. The voice came from the other train which had been stopped like ours near the forest. It was a man's voice, and he sang the serenade from "La Damnation de Faust"—"Vous qui faites l'endormie," etc., and this song, rendered with feeling by a musical and charming voice, lifted my spirits from gloom and my soul from despair.
How I listened to this song, which bore from the train-load of wounded the sweet message of a loving thought to some far-away sweetheart. In the moonlight in the midst of all this human misery and distress it was sublime.
Oh! love, thou art within the reach of all, and like the great sea sheddest thy glamor even within the lowliest dwelling.
I shall long remember that man's song, and his warm and vibrant southern voice.
These poetic impressions were soon obliterated at Orleans. Never shall I forget the hell that station was.... It seemed impossible to walk through that station without treading upon something or somebody. Hundreds of human beings were stretched on seats and on the ground; children were sleeping amongst bits of orange-peel and dirty pieces of paper, their mothers were squatting down beside them. Stretcher-bearers were going round with their stretchers.
All of us conceal from our neighbors our inmost thoughts, our secret wounds, our hidden dreams, our cherished illusions, and our unknown longings. And the part of us which we hide so jealously is the most real, the most essential, the most enduring. That which we offer to the outer world is only the husk and the mask!
Ah! what we mothers hide!
Yesterday at Lamballe we met a convoy of Prussian prisoners. They were going, under a strong guard, to work on the railway. At the sight of the gang my heart leapt within me. Standing up in the car I lost all control of myself, and shouted: "Bandits, savages, assassins, down with the Kaiser!" I was trembling with rage and emotion to think that here I had before my eyes those brutes who had killed women and children, girls and old men, for no reason at all—simply for the pleasure of killing.