han we do, they knew us all by name. One of
them, who stopped at her door to demand a drink, told her so himself,
and called her by name. He told her he had lived in Paris for years."

That was probably true. The delivery automobiles from all the big
shops in Paris came out here twice, and some of them three times a
week. It is no secret that Paris was full of Germans, and has been
ever since that beastly treaty of Frankfort, which would have expired
next year.

After Amelie had gone back to her work, I came into the library and
sat down at my desk to possess my soul with what patience I could,
until official news came. But writing was impossible.

Of course to a person who has known comparatively few restraints of
this sort, there is something queer in this kind of isolation. I am afraid
I cannot exactly explain it to you. As I could not work, I walked out on
to the chemin Madame. On one side I looked across the valley of the
Marne to the heights crowned by the bombarded towns. On the other
I looked across the valley of the Grande Morin, where, on the heights
behind the trees, I knew little towns like Coutevoult and Montbarbin
were evacuated. In the valley at the foot of the hill, Couilly and St.
Germain, Montry and Esbly were equally deserted. No smoke rose
above the red roofs. Not a soul was on the roads. Even the railway
station was closed, and the empty cars stood, locked, on the side-
tracks. It was strangely silent.

I don't know how many people there are at Voisins. I hear that there
is no one at Quincy. As for Huiry? Well, our population--everyone
accounted for before the mobilization--was twenty-nine. The hamlet
consists of only nine houses. Today we are six grown people and
seven children.

There is no doctor if one should be so silly as to fall ill. There are no
civil authorities to make out a death certificate if one had the bad
taste to die--and one can't die informally in France. If anyone should,
so far as I can see, he would have to walk to his grave, dig it, and lie
down in it himself, and that would be a scandal, and I am positive it
would lead to a proces. The French love lawsuits, you know. No
respectable family is ever without one.

However, there has not been a case of illness in our little community
since we were cut off from the rest of the world.

Somehow, at times, in the silence, I get a strange sensation of
unreality--the sort of intense feeling of its all being a dream. I wish I
di