Mrs. Denton's friends called upon her, and most of them invited her to
their houses. A few were politicians, senators or ministers. Others
were bankers, heads of business houses, literary men and women. There
were also a few quiet folk with names that were historical. They all
thought that war between France and England would be a world disaster,
but were not very hopeful of averting it. She learnt that Carleton was
in Berlin trying to secure possession of a well-known German daily that
happened at the moment to be in low water. He was working for an
alliance between Germany and England. In France, the Royalists had come
to an understanding with the Clericals, and both were evidently making
ready to throw in their lot with the war-mongers, hoping that out of the
troubled waters the fish would come their way. Of course everything
depended on the people. If the people only knew it! But they didn't.
They stood about in puzzled flocks, like sheep, wondering which way the
newspaper dog was going to hound them. They took her to the great music
halls. Every allusion to war was greeted with rapturous applause. The
Marseillaise was demanded and encored till the orchestra rebelled from
sheer exhaustion. Joan's patience was sorely tested. She had to listen
with impassive face to coarse jests and brutal gibes directed against
England and everything English; to sit unmoved while the vast audience
rocked with laughter at senseless caricatures of supposed English
soldiers whose knees always gave way at the sight of a French uniform.
Even in the eyes of her courteous hosts, Joan's quick glance would
occasionally detect a curious glint. The fools! Had they never heard of
Waterloo and Trafalgar? Even if their memories might be excused for
forgetting Crecy and Poictiers and the campaigns of Marlborough. One
evening--it had been a particularly trying one for Joan--there stepped
upon the stage a wooden-looking man in a kilt with bagpipes under his
arm. How he had got himself into the programme Joan could not
understand. Managerial watchfulness must have gone to sleep for once. He
played Scotch melodies, and the Parisians liked them, and when he had
finished they called him back. Joan and her friends occupied a box close
to the stage. The wooden-looking Scot glanced up at her, and their eyes
met. And as the applause died down there rose the first low warning
strains of the Pibroch. Joan sat up in her chair and her