Some policemen were walking in
solitary state along the sidewalk, which was deserted. The station
master, to whom I presented my card, told me, in the most
extraordinarily calm voice in the world, as if he had been doing the
same thing every morning:
"Track number 5. Your train leaves at 6.27."
And the train left at 6.27, like any good little train that is on
time. It had left quietly; it was almost empty. It had followed the
Seine, and I had seen Paris lighted up by the peaceable morning glow,
Paris which was still asleep. And I had rubbed my eyes, asking myself
if I wasn't dreaming, if I wasn't asleep. Were we really at war? My
eyes were seeing nothing of it, but my memory kept recalling the fact.
It recalled the unforgettable scenes of those last days--that scene
especially, at four o'clock in the evening on the first of August,
when the crowd along the boulevard had suddenly seen the mobilization
orders posted in the window of a newspaper office. A shout burst
forth, a shout I shall hear until my last moment, which made me
tremble from the crown of my head to the soles of my feet. It was a
shout that seemed to come from the very bowels of the earth, the shout
of a people who, for years, had waited for that moment.
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