“Bah! The old story told to us for so many years!” laughed the man at the next table as he rose slowly and took his straw hat. “We shall meet here again—say this day week, and then you will be forced to admit the truth of my argument.”
“Well—let us hope so, m’sieur. We shall see,” Valentin replied with a gesture of apprehension, which showed him to be concerned.
The fat man wished him a merry “bon jour,” and passed out upon the sun-baked pavement, where the excited crowds were now hurrying, eagerly discussing the alarming news.
“War! War! WAR!”
The word was upon everyone’s lips throughout the length and breadth of the animated little capital of les braves Belges—the people so long sneered at by their superiors in Paris until the very expression had become synonymous of a populace actuated by timid arrogance, and who merely aped all the culture and most of the vices of the Parisians.
When the optimistical stockbroker had gone, Edmond again took up his paper and read how Sir Edward Grey had made a statement in the House of Commons, in London, regarding the obligations of honour, and of national security involved in the maintenance by Great Britain of Belgian neutrality. France and Russia were already in a state of war with Germany. Would Great Britain stand by Belgium?
Upon the terrasse of the crowded restaurant and within, the sole topic of the excited conversation was the seriousness of the situation. Old men who had been scared times without number by the war-clouds which had risen over Europe, laughed to scorn the idea of a great conflict.
“My dear Jules?” shouted a thin-faced, white-bearded man—the head of a great commercial house—across the restaurant. “Do not give it another thought. There will be no war. The Germans are not yet ready, and the diplomats will arrange it all, as they always do. They are paid for it. The Kaiser’s bark is worse than his bite.”
Whereat many laughed.
But not so Edmond Valentin. He had been a close student of international politics, and in order to supplement his income at the criminal bar, he had often written articles upon international politics for the Indépendance Belge, and the Matin of Antwerp. What he had feared and predicted was, alas! coming rapidly true.