t and
spots of mud. Many of them displayed the names of business firms
in Paris, others the names of provincial establishments. With these
industrial vehicles requisitioned by mobilization were others from the
public service which produced in Desnoyers the same effect as a familiar
face in a throng of strangers. On their upper parts were the names of
their old routes:--"Madeleine-Bastille, Passy-Bourne," etc. Probably he
had travelled many times in these very vehicles, now shabby and aged by
twenty days of intense activity, with dented planks and twisted metal,
perforated like sieves, but rattling crazily on.

Some of the conveyances displayed white discs with a red cross in the
center; others had certain letters and figures comprehensible only to
those initiates in the secrets of military administration. Within
these vehicles--the only new and strong motors--he saw soldiers, many
soldiers, but all wounded, with head and legs bandaged, ashy faces made
still more tragic by their growing beards, feverish eyes looking fixedly
ahead, mouths so sadly immobile that they seemed carven by agonizing
groans. Doctors and nurses were occupying various carriages in this
convoy escorted by several platoons of horsemen. And mingled with
the slowly moving horses and automobiles were marching groups of
foot-soldiers, with cloaks unbuttoned or hanging from their shoulders
like capes--wounded men who were able to walk and joke and sing, some
with arms in splints across their breasts, others with bandaged heads
with clotted blood showing through the thin white strips.

The millionaire longed to do something for these brave fellows, but he
had hardly begun to distribute some bottles of wine and loaves of bread
before a doctor interposed, upbraiding him as though he had committed
a crime. His gifts might result fatally. So he had to stand beside the
road, sad and helpless, looking after the sorrowful convoy. . . . By
nightfall the vehicles filled with the sick were no longer filing by.

He now saw hundreds of drays, some hermetically sealed with the prudence
that explosive material requires, others with bundles and boxes that
were sending out a stale odor of provisions. Then came great herds of
cattle raising thick, whirling clouds of dust in the narrow parts of the
road, prodded on by the sticks and yells of the shepherds in kepis.

His thoughts kept him wakeful all night. This, then, was the retreat of
which the people of Paris were tal