ll burn down everything, my house,
my barn!"

They all went out in high excitement. Philippe was able for a long time
to distinguish Farmer Saboureux's exclamations through the garden
window. And the picture of all those anxious, noisy people, drunk with
talk and action, rushing from side to side in obedience to unreasoning
impulses, that picture suggested to him a vision of the great mad crowds
which the war was about to let loose like the waves of a sea.

"Come on," he said. "It's time to act."

He took a railway-guide from the table and turned up the station at
Langoux. The new strategic line passed through Langoux, the line which
follows the Vosges and runs down to Belfort and Switzerland. He found
that he could reach Bale and sleep at Zurich that same evening.

He stood up and looked around him, with his heart wrung at the thought
of going away like that, without bidding good-bye to any one. Marthe
had not answered his letter and remained invisible. His father had
turned him out and would never forgive him. He must go away by stealth,
like a malefactor. "Well," he murmured, thinking of the act which he was
on the point of accomplishing, "it's better so. In any case and in spite
of everything, I was bound, now that war has been declared, to appear a
miscreant and a renegade in my father's eyes. Have I the right to rob
him of the least affectionate word?"

Mme. Morestal came up from the garden and he heard her moaning:

"War! Oh, heaven, war, like last time! And your poor father forced to
keep his bed! Ah, Philippe, it's the end of all things!"

She shifted a few chairs in their places, wiped the table-cover with her
apron and, when the drawing-room seemed tidy to her eyes, went to the
door:

"Perhaps he is awake.... What will he want to do, when he hears?... If
only he keeps quiet! A man of his age ..."

Philippe went up to her, in an instinctive burst of confidence:

"You know I'm going, mother?"

She replied:

"You're going? Well, yes, you are right. I dare say I shall persuade
Marthe to come back to you...."

He shook his head:

"I'm afraid not...."

"Yes, yes," she declared, "Marthe loves you very much. And then there
are the children to bring you together. Leave it to me.... The same with
your father: don't be alarmed.... Everything will smooth down in time
between the two of you. Go, my boy.... Write to me often...."

"Won't you kiss me, mother?"

She kissed him on the forehead, a quick,