always admired those men who witnessed the Siege of Paris in 1870.
Now it was going to be his good fortune to observe an historical drama,
perhaps even more interesting. The wonders that he would be able to
relate in the future! . . . But the distraction and indifference of his
present audience were annoying him greatly. He would hasten back to the
studio, in feverish excitement, to communicate the latest gratifying
news to Desnoyers who would listen as though he did not hear him.
The night that he informed him that the Government, the Chambers, the
Diplomatic Corps, and even the actors of the Comedie Francaise were
going that very hour on special trains for Bordeaux, his companion
merely replied with a shrug of indifference.

Desnoyers was worrying about other things. That morning he had received
a note from Marguerite--only two lines scrawled in great haste. She was
leaving, starting immediately, accompanied by her mother. Adieu! . . .
and nothing more. The panic had caused many love-affairs to be
forgotten, had broken off long intimacies, but Marguerite's temperament
was above such incoherencies from mere flight. Julio felt that her
terseness was very ominous. Why not mention the place to which she was
going? . . .

In the afternoon, he took a bold step which she had always forbidden. He
went to her home and talked a long time with the concierge in order
to get some news. The good woman was delighted to work off on him the
loquacity so brusquely cut short by the flight of tenants and servants.
The lady on the first floor (Marguerite's mother) had been the last to
abandon the house in spite of the fact that she was really sick over her
son's departure. They had left the day before without saying where they
were going. The only thing that she knew was that they took the train in
the Gare d'Orsay. They were going toward the South like all the rest of
the rich.

And she supplemented her revelations with the vague news that the
daughter had seemed very much upset by the information that she had
received from the front. Someone in the family was wounded. Perhaps it
was the brother, but she really didn't know. With so many surprises and
strange things happening, it was difficult to keep track of everything.
Her husband, too, was in the army and she had her own affairs to worry
about.

"Where can she have gone?" Julio asked himself all day long. "Why does
she wish to keep me in ignorance of her whereabouts?"

When his