ow well enough there'll be
war some day, seeing there's always been war after war since the world
was a world, and therefore there'll be another; but just now--at
once--a big job like that? Nonsense! It's not true. No."

Some days went by, tranquilly, as days do. Then the great story
reappeared, increased and branched out in all directions. Austria,
Serbia, the ultimatum, Russia. The notion of war was soon everywhere.
You could see it distracting men and slackening their pace in the going
and coming of work. One divined it behind the doors and windows of the
houses.

One Saturday evening, when Marie and I--like most of the French--did
not know what to think, and talked emptily, we heard the town crier,
who performs in our quarter, as in the villages.

"Ah!" she said.

We went out and saw in the distance the back of the man who was tapping
a drum. His smock was ballooned. He seemed pushed aslant by the wind,
stiffening himself in the summer twilight to sound his muffled roll.
Although we could not see him well and scarcely heard him, his progress
through the street had something grand about it.

Some people grouped in a corner said to us, "The mobilization."

No other word left their lips. I went from group to group to form an
opinion, but people drew back with sealed faces, or mechanically raised
their arms heavenwards. And we knew no better what to think now that
we were at last informed.

We went back into the court, the passage, the room, and then I said to
Marie, "I go on the ninth day--a week, day after to-morrow--to my depot
at Motteville."

She looked at me, as though doubtful.

I took my military pay book from the wardrobe and opened it on the
table. Leaning against each other, we looked chastely at the red page
where the day of my joining was written, and we spelled it all out as
if we were learning to read.

Next day and the following days everybody went headlong to meet the
newspapers. We read in them--and under their different titles they
were then all alike--that a great and unanimous upspringing was
electrifying France, and the little crowd that we were felt itself also
caught by the rush of enthusiasm and resolution. We looked at each
other with shining eyes of approval. I, too, I heard myself cry, "At
last!" All our patriotism rose to the surface.

Our quarter grew fevered. We made speeches, we proclaimed the moral
verities--or explained them. The echoes of vast or petty n