“Turn back, and drive home by the Champs Elysées,” she said.
But the tide had risen too rapidly. The Rue de Rivoli was flooded. It had caught the delirium of the boulevards, and was sending back their echoes with frantic exultation. Cabs and omnibuses were seized with the sudden insanity, private coaches caught it, foot-passengers, gamins, and bourgeois, and messieurs les voyageurs careering on the top of omnibuses, all en masse caught it, and shouted as one man: “Vive la France! vive la guerre! A Berlin! à Berlin!” Ladies and gentlemen, reclining in soft-cushioned carriages, started suddenly into effervescence, waved hats and handkerchiefs, and cried: “Vive la guerre! A Berlin!” Horses neighed, and dogs barked, and the very paving-stones shook to the popular passion. All Paris shouted and shrieked till the city, like a huge belfry, rang with thundering salvos: “Vive la guerre! A Berlin! à Berlin!”
Berthe’s horses, scared anew by the uproar that was now close upon them, played their part in the general row by plunging and prancing, and eliciting screams of terror from the adjacent women and children, while the coachman brandished his whip, and the footman whirled his hat in the air, and shouted with all their might: “A Berlin! à Berlin!” A troop of gamins laid violent hands on a Savoyard who was grinding away “Non ti scordar di me,” to the delight of the concierge in the nearest porte-cochère, and, dragging him to the fore, bade him at once strike up the Marseillaise. Luckily for his limbs, the despotic command was within the limits of the Savoyard’s instrument. He turned its handle, and began vigorously grinding out the Republican chant. Every man, woman, and child within ear-shot took up the chorus, “Marchons! marchons!” till the palpitating air throbbed and thrilled with the passionate voices of the multitude.
Berthe was not long proof against the magnetic current that was whirling round her. First terrified, then bewildered, then electrified, she caught the intoxication, and yielded to its impulse: “Vive la France! Vive la guerre!” And the fair hand waved its snowy little flag from the window as the carriage moved slowly past the Tuileries gardens.
Emerging into the broad space of the Place de la Concorde, the horses seemed to breathe more freely, and, quickening their step, tore at full speed up the Champs Elysées.
“What possessed me to shout and cheer with those madmen?” said Berthe, soliloquizing aloud, and laughing at the absurdity of her recent behavior. “I must have gone mad myself for the moment. Vive la guerre indeed! Heaven help us! We shall hear another cry by-and-by, when the widows and orphans and sisters of France hear at what price her new laurels have been bought. Thank God I have no brothers!”
“Madame la Marquise de Chassedot is waiting, madame,” said François, as Berthe entered.
“Has she been waiting?”
“A short half-hour, madame.”
“What can she have to say?” thought Berthe.