oiling, not because of vanity, but
because of the joyous sense of cleanliness and perfume after the filth
and stench of life in the desolate fields; then the booksellers' (Madame
Carpentier et fille) on the right-hand side, which was not only the
rendezvous of the miscellaneous crowd buying stationery and La Vie
Parisienne, but of the intellectuals who spoke good French and bought
good books and liked ten minutes' chat with the mother and daughter.
(Madame was an Alsatian lady with vivid memories of 1870, when, as a
child, she had first learned to hate Germans.) She hated them now with
a fresh, vital hatred, and would have seen her own son dead a hundred
times--he was a soldier in Saloniki--rather than that France should make
a compromise peace with the enemy. She had been in Amiens, as I was, on
a dreadful night of August of 1914, when the French army passed through
in retreat from Bapaume, and she and the people of her city knew for the
first time that the Germans were close upon them. She stood in the crowd
as I did--in the darkness, watching that French column pass with their
transport, and their wounded lying on the baggage wagons, men of many
regiments mixed up, the light of the street lamps shining on the casques
of cuirassiers with their long horsehair tails, leading their stumbling
horses, and foot soldiers, hunched under their packs, marching silently
with dragging steps. Once in a while one of the soldiers left the ranks
and came on to the sidewalk, whispering to a group of dark shadows.
The crowds watched silently, in a curious, dreadful silence, as though
stunned. A woman near me spoke in a low voice, and said, "Nous sommes
perdus!" Those were the only words I heard or remembered.

That night in the station of Amiens the boys of a new class were being
hurried away in truck trains, and while their army was in retreat sang
"La Marseillaise," as though victory were in their hearts. Next day
the German army under von Kluck entered Amiens, and ten days afterward
passed through it on the way to Paris. Madame Carpentier told me of the
first terror of the people when the field-gray men came down the Street
of the Three Pebbles and entered their shops. A boy selling oranges
fainted when a German stretched out his hand to buy some. Women hid
behind their counters when German boots stamped into their shops.
But Madame Carpentier was not afraid. She knew the Germans and their
language. She spoke frank words to German of