CHAPTER V

THE WAR

Père Grandin very soon became a favorite, and not the least devoted of his friends was Père Antoine, our village priest. The temper of the two men was most congenial, and the fervor of their love of goodness, their common age, a certain sweet complacency in the joyousness of life and in the complete mercy of God, wedded them to each other, and so into our intimate circle of friends Père Antoine, through the mediation of Père Grandin was joined, and both father and mother thus grew more sympathetic and permissive with Gabrielle and myself, and the days flowed smoothly, and the years followed each other joyously.

I became more and more interested in the work I had undertaken, and, under the pressure of its laborious needs, with frequent visits to Paris, found my time admirably occupied, while I was not too busy to omit the recreations of the home life with our friends. Above all caressed by my dear sister, whose companionship I now more and more delighted in, I was growing, perhaps by a premature decline of animal spirits, into a bachelor, whose inmost heart still kept unimpaired the image and hope of his first love. That indeed dwelt with me perpetually, and by the platonic resuscitation of its enjoyment administered literally to my physical contentment.

There was in my library an English book written by an American authoress in which I came upon this sentence (the book was sent to me by a Texan acquaintance after I had left America): "there were hours when she felt that any bitter personal past--that the recollection of a single despairing kiss or a blighted love would have filled her days with happiness. What she craved was the conscious dignity of a broken heart--some lofty memory that she might rest upon in her hour of weakness."

The philosophy and the psychology of the paragraph are profoundly true. That relationship which sex seems inexorably to claim is satisfied naturally by union, but its omission finds exoneration at least in the remembrance of disappointment. I grew with each succeeding year more and more sedately complacent, and a gravity of thought, deepened by a pleasant melancholy, mingled with the real consolations of religion and the inseparable charm of my sister and kept me composed and evenly--at times almost jubilantly--happy. My work was attracting some attention, and it promised for me continued and congenial employment.

We had many garden parties with Privat Deschat and Capitaine Bleu-Pistache--growing more feeble now, more silent, with often unbidden tears springing to his eyes--and Quintado and Père Grandin and Père Antoine--though he was not so often with us--and the sweet-voiced and sparkling little orphan girl the captain had adopted--Dora Destin, a vivacious creature with delicate ways and a keen appetite for tarts and pastry, and a peculiar shyness that came and went so oddly, that one instant she might be hiding, as if afraid, and the next leaping amongst us like a bird. Mother and father had become in the later years even graver, and a calmness--I dreaded to believe that it meant some interior failing--descended upon them, that made their ways a little embarrassing at times. We all noted it. It was a presage, a shadow. They were silent in company, and once or twice, I thought--this was just a year before the War--father seemed unconscious of his surroundings; his mind wandered and he kept saying "_Alfred_, _Alfred_" to me, as if dazed or grieved. The stealthy hand of Paralysis thus crept slowly forward towards its unescapable conclusion.

Of course Gabrielle was in our parties, and she had become to me the concentrated bliss of my living. Her growth into a healthier condition of mind and body had accompanied an increasing adaptability to company, and while the reserved manner remained, bestowing upon her a fine dignity, she was truly sociable and friendly. Gabrielle never quite outgrew the secretive habit of her thoughtfulness, and her deportment had been criticized and found fault with, as cold and austere. The inference would have been cruelly unjust, for never breathed a kinder and more devotedly good heart than my sister possessed. Her abstracted way often arose from the custom of religious meditation, and I suppose too was influenced by that singular supernatural--to call it so--power that she always felt, but now, so far as I knew, seldom exercised. It was that power that made of her the MEDIATRIX of the nations.

It was hardly fifteen years after my return that the Grown Prince of Austria was shot in Sarajevo in Serbia, and that was on the day of the _Grand Prix de Paris_. I read the news to Gabrielle, and Père Grandin was there. He had taken dinner with us. How well I remember his terror-stricken face. He pushed his spectacles up over his high white forehead, and his bright eyes glowed strangely with a growing fear. His expressive lips twitched almost as if he were in pain, and he lifted up his hands in protestation.

"God forbid. The blow has fallen then. The bolt shot. Alfred, this is the torch that starts the conflagration. The material--all inflammable, all explosive--has been heaped up between the nations, and, like a fierce _feu-de-joie_ it will kindle into a wall of fire--_un rideau de feu_--between the countries. God save France!"

I was incredulous as were at the time most people. I laughed at the good man's warning, and because he felt half grieved at my carelessness, half stifled with apprehension as if almost--so he put it--his ears were filling already with the rumble of cannon, he begged our pardon for his distress. He put on his crumpled Panama hat and stood at the doorway, almost irresolute in his trepidation and sadness. He looked at me quite long.

I recall the moon riding high in white drifting vapors that came in from Calais--and in the changing light and shade he seemed almost preternaturally pale and sombre.

"_Mon patrie_," he sighed, "again the ravage, the desolation, the orphaned, the widowed, the crippled, the sick, the breaking hearts--Ah, Ah--" and seizing my hands as if in support in his agitation, he wept.

"But Père Grandin" I said, now thoroughly alarmed over his evident agony, "surely you are too quick, too hasty. Europe is at peace. Its people are reasonably happy. They will not permit war, and--"

I got no further. The old man was choking with emotion--it was half wrath, half despair.

"Permit it? Can they stop it? Do they govern? Is it not kings and princes and royal houses and titled ministers, the tyrants of opinion, the caprice or the pride or the selfishness of aristocrats, that control everything?

"See, they prance by us, unseeing, unthoughtful, just living for themselves, and then when the crash comes--the crash they have prepared with their silly talk of national honor, national enlargement, national continuity, racial union, destiny, putting over it all a gorgeous light of promised glory--just as the heroes in a stage play walk and stand in the glare of the electric lantern from the gallery, uttering bombast--when the crash comes, they summon the troops, they dragoon the people, they empty the banks, they crack the whip of urgency, and, pointing to the flag, drive us in hecatombs to death.

"No, no, Alfred--the war will come. I have long felt its growing tremors. We cultivate revenge in our hearts, the Germans cultivate hate, the Cossacks conquest, the Austrians dynasty, the Englishmen trade-money, their assumed preeminence, and there have been cabals and understandings, and a jolt snaps the artifice of our pretended brotherhood and, with hoof and claw, we fly at each other's throats. Bah--_vous verrez_."

His rage had restored his strength, and he stumbled away muttering and gesticulating. I watched him going across the roadway in the light that danced with the swinging lanterns when the night wind from the distant shores blew more strongly. The disks and outlines of shadows imparted to him a peculiar effect of unsteadiness. I half thought he staggered.

I went back to the library. There I found Gabrielle leaning over the paper I had flung down at the old man's outburst, and reading of the assassination. She looked up as I returned, and her face was white, and in her eyes too I saw an awful consternation. I was impatient with this foolishness, and expostulated loudly.

"What, Gabrielle, are you too imbecile? Père Grandin is in a panic. Why? He sees us fighting already--just because the heir to a crown is shot. It's absurd--_pas vraisemblable_."

"Alfred, I think we should not be too sure. It all looks bad to me, and--if it comes. What?"

Her eyes dilated with terror.

"Why, Gabrielle, have we not prepared ourselves for just this! Besides we have allies now--it is not as it was in 1870. There is England, there is Russia. _Sacre nom_, it will be as when Greek meets Greek--not _comme les vautours et les pigeons_."

"Ah, Alfred, think of the suffering. O! I have seen suffering in the hospitals, but a whole nation to be made into one huge hospital. _Mon Dieu, c'est incroyable!_"

"Wait, Gabrielle. Don't borrow trouble. The world cannot afford war now. _La Guerre est un peu passée aujourd'hui. Eh?_"

"Alfred, the devil is never sick, and never tired, and never asleep."

That night the news was confirmed. Then came Austria's demands; and then a chasing hither and thither of couriers; the wires hot with messages; lights in the embassies all night; rage, dismay; in the cities the people silent or cheering in the streets; houses closed or hidden in flags; in the ministries forebodings; feverish despatches; and almost always hopelessness. Peace was impossible; everywhere the "mailed fist"--_poing armée_--of the Kaiser. Then came Austria's declaration of war against Servia on July 29th. The detonation was at hand which would burst Europe asunder.

Capitaine Bleu-Pistache asked me to go to Paris at once, so did Père Grandin, so did Privat Deschat, and although father and mother seemed listless about it I, thoroughly awake now to the disaster, was impatient to visit the capital, and see how things were going. But Gabrielle did not wish me to go.

"Alfred, is it not best to hear the news here? You cannot enlist. Alfred you know that is impossible." She suddenly checked herself. I knew her thought, and my cheeks grew crimson--my weakness and physical deficiency now cut me off from service--"No, Alfred it was not that, not that," her embarrassment brought tears to her eyes. "No not that, but I am afraid of some danger. Now it is everywhere, an explosion, a chance shot, a street quarrel. Alfred let me go too."

"Gabrielle I shall be quite safe. I shall be O! so very timid."

She smiled.

"Not so timid alone Alfred, as if I were there too."

"Nonsense Gabrielle, is it not written, _la femme fait le coeur intrépide_. But really it would be very foolish for you to come. Watch here. I will be so careful."

She seemed inconsolable, so I promised to write daily.

Père Grandin wished all the papers sent to him, and the captain, the pictures, illustrations, prints, anything that would _speak_ rather than _tell_--so he put it. And Privat Deschat whispered, "Alfred Lupin, you remember my prophecy of more than twenty years ago. I have said nothing about it--_rien_. But Lupin, if by a chance you can kill a Dutchman or even come by a dead one bring me his two ears."

"Privat," I almost shouted, "by all means--but Why?"

"Alfred," Deschat tossed his big head this side and that as a mastif might, coming out of the water, "I would dry them hard, tan them, and wear them as tassels on my smoking cap, _mon chapeau de fumée_."

Père Antoine was the last man I saw in St. Choiseul. I left for Briois in the cabriolet in the evening, and with all of my adieus at home over I had settled back in my seat, in a gloomy meditation upon the frightful turn in events, and with some compunctions too over my own indiscreet skepticism as to its possibility. My face was buried in the nosegay Gabrielle had pressed into my hands--I see her now standing in the doorway where the light from the hall flung around her the aureole of its pale illumination--and my thoughts grew each moment more sombre, when the carriage was abruptly stopped, and I heard the voice of Père Antoine speaking to the driver.

I recognized the father at once, and delightedly welcomed the interruption; my own sombreness threatened a positive _malaise_.

"Father, you here? Step into the carriage. I am on my way to Briois, and then by train to Paris. My friends--yours too--wanted me to go and I am impatient to watch things nearer the focus."

"Ah, my child" answered the benignant man, now seated beside me, "what new horrors does it all mean? I tremble for religion. I know the sneers that will be flung at FAITH. Where, where, they will cry, is this merciful GOD?--and as the misery rises, their cry will seem to have its justification. But surely God is in the storm as well as in the quiet dawn? If the war really breaks out then it leads to larger things--all in the scheme and providence of the Almighty."

"Father we must hope and pray that the worst cannot happen."

"Yes my son, but we must be also submissive. We must not fix in our prayers the stubbornness of expectation. What comes we must accept as the work of God. There can be no reservations in our acknowledgment of the immediate and uninterrupted immanence of the divine POWER. Let us simply trust."

I murmured disheartedly:

_Ici tout meurt, la fleur, l'été, La jeunesse et la vie._

The good man pressed my hands, and as we drew near to the lights in the station I saw his pained and overflowing eyes.

* * * * *

I came into Paris at the Gare d'Orsay on August first. Mobilization began the next day and when I reached the Place de l'Opéra crowds of young men were marching in the streets, crying, almost shrieking, "_Vive la France_." Girls along the balconies and from the windows showered flowers on them. In other streets groups of young men were singing the Marseillaise, and waving the flags of France and Russia and England. It was fiercely exciting, and when at last my eagerness broke all restraint I joined some of them--my limp was no hindrance there--and almost forgot my destination, drinking in the elixir of patriotism for a few delirious moments.

It was the next day (August third) that I hurried to my publisher's--Avenue de l'Alma--and found him with his family about him, disordered in dress, and dismally grave. It was M. Albert Yvette. He welcomed me with effusion, and resolved to take me to the Chamber of Deputies where the premier M. Viviani would speak on the situation. That would be the next day, and for the moment we would go over some copy as a temporary distraction from the mind-blighting crisis which had overcome the country. M. Yvette had four sons, two of whom had already joined the colors, and three exquisite daughters, two young girls, and the third a married woman, who in this extremity had united her family with her father's, and added to his own overflowing _famille_ three boys--_joufflus et bruants_--so that there was no lack of excitement; conversation and predictions too.

On August first Jaures the socialist leader had been assassinated, and yet this monstrous assault failed to arouse national dissension. Yvette said it was significant. France was as one man and an undivided nation would frustrate the enemy.

We all agreed, but the coming test promised to be a severe one. The news that came in from the advancing Germans was not welcome, and showed the organization of a powerful attack. Yvette was confident that even the "spray," as he termed it, of the Teutonic wave would not reach us. I did not think so. Paris was in danger. Madame Yvette became tremulous and the daughters were in tears. Then came the news, flashed through the streets as if by a magnetic sympathy, answering the popular suspense, that England had declared war upon Germany. This was most cheering, and the days before France seemed less threatening.

We attended the session of the Chamber of Deputies. It was inspiring. The English and Russian ambassadors sat together, and the Chamber awaited the proceedings in complete silence. A tribute to the dead socialist Jaures was delivered by M. Paul Deschanel. It was eloquent, and the resounding shout that greeted the declaration that with France "there are no more adversaries; there are only Frenchmen," thrilled everyone present by its vociferous unanimity. Then followed the speech of the Premier M. Viviani, who read his address, punctuated by repeated cries of "_Vive la France_," and when he concluded with the phrase, uttered in a tone of metallic defiance, "We are without reproach. We shall be without fear," the Chamber went mad, and the walls sent back the billows of sound, as the air above the heads of the deputies became white with waving handkerchiefs and papers.

Yvette was overcome with his feelings, and I led him from the room trembling with emotion.

The next day Yvette appeared greatly refreshed, and suggested almost jocosely that we should together "_parcourir la ville_." I gladly assented. I craved this intimacy with the dramatic incidents of the moment, and was only too anxious to record some vivid impression of the city under this terrifying menace. That was August sixth, and we walked or rode all of the day. At night Paris was silent and dark, the streets almost deserted, and the soldiery watchful.

The dressmakers and milliners on the Rue de la Paix--the irony of the name grimly diverted us--were almost all shut up, and the street was a long dull succession of iron shutters. We saw women on the street cars (tramways). Along the Boulevard des Capucines our eyes were astonished by a drove of a hundred cows being driven through that avenue; the papers were sold in immense numbers, and the lively trade in them brought boys, girls, women, and old men from the suburbs to share in the momentary activity. Everywhere we saw the momentous enthusiasm and determination of the people, and any appearance of troops entrained for the frontier started the wildest applause.

Paris has been for an instant stunned by the spell of a terrible apprehension, that quickly succumbed to a returning wave of excited, indignant, overwhelming patriotism. I felt that the actual danger as a fear vanished in the tremendous reaction of rage and resolution. Its industries are crippled, its hilarity suppressed, and the many hued veil of joy and enjoyment that enveloped it like a cloud, has been torn aside, only to reveal the underlying hardihood and substance of manhood and devotion.

It looked finely, but I could not now shake off the terror of my mind over the Germanic rush onward. I intuitively felt that their devastating passage southward from Belgium would stretch far into France, and if arrested at all must be parried or flung back by the concentrated energy of the French and English armies, before its irresistible massiveness assumed such proportions as to become immovable and impregnable. I began to fear for St. Choiseul, and was anxious to return. M. Yvette pressed me to remain a few days longer, and as I had despatched all of my commissions--papers to Privat Deschat, and pictures to the captain, and letters every day to Gabrielle and Père Antoine--I assented.

Each succeeding day manifested the overturn in the domestic and routine days of the great city. The morning breakfast rolls had gone because the bakers are with the army, and families are supplied only with _boulot_ and _demi-fendu_, but the supply is irregular, and the girls go after both the bread and the milk. In a hundred ways the national emergency is felt in the family, apart from the departure of sons, and the even retinue of service has been disarranged, with amusing consequences. Lines were formed before the provision shops in the mornings.

On August eighth good news was received, and the quickly revived spirits of the city became apparent in the crowded streets, with a noticeable resumption of gayety. I went to church, leaving the Yvettes home. The church was filled to repletion, and there was a large proportion of men. The service was well rendered, and the preacher touched upon the one thing uppermost in all minds, and admonished faith, courage, and prayer. As the congregation emerged from the portals of the church, the Marseillaise was heard from a near-by street, and, like a spark conveyed to combustibles, the surging mass broke out with song. It was a convulsion of fervor that made one almost quail before its immense intensity.

I took my leave of the Yvettes, who had been charmingly pleasant to me in their great home, and where the enormous sadness was sensibly softened by their amiability and courage. That was August fifteenth. The morning was dark with heavy thunderstorms, and the rain fell continuously. In the large dining room of the Yvettes, we gathered at a late breakfast--_une affaire de semi-cuisine à midi_--and, as the chandeliers were lighted and candles graced the side-board, and the mantel, and the high square _étagères_, it took on the expression of an "occasion." M. Yvette said it was my valedictory. I hardly knew what he meant, but this I know, that that was the last time I saw Yvette, or any of his splendid family. Yvette died at Bordeaux after the official evacuation of Paris; his two boys were killed at the battle of the Marne, and then the widow and the unmarried daughters left the mansion in the Avenue de l'Alma and lived with Madame Aubray, the married daughter. I have never seen any of them since.

We all tried to be cheerful, but the incessant marching of troops in the city during the last three days occurred to some of us as ominous of the encroaching and steadily moving Teuton. The conversation was most disingenuous, touching upon almost anything but the immediate preoccupations of our minds, and the apparent social _abandon_ masked the uneasy sense of danger. The only remark that related to the war was one by myself, to the purpose that the superbly furnished table offered no suggestions of the possibility of Paris being starved--which perhaps under the circumstances was a little _maladroit_--and the story that Madame Aubray repeated, that a Prussian officer speaking French perfectly, among a group of prisoners at Versailles, met some French reservists, who passed the convoy singing the Marseillaise, and he turned to his guard and quickly remarked, "_What a disillusion awaits us!_"

M. Yvette accompanied me to the train at the Gare du Nord, and as I bade him "Farewell," he referred to the familiar and deep impression made upon everyone of the profound unity of the people, telling me that the Catholic Abbé Marcadé whose services at Le Bourget had attracted so much praise, had dined with the officers of the regiment and with the socialist mayor of the commune. He added, "I tell you, M. Lupin, the cementation of France is extraordinary. National cohesion has made us incompressible."

"Ah," I answered as I stepped into the almost empty train, "remember, M. Yvette, there is also such a calamity as pulverization."

My spirits had undergone a complete change since my talk with Père Grandin, and a gnawing feeling of hopelessness tormented me.

But how inexpressibly sweet it all was at St. Choiseul, and in the lovely and beloved country about it, as I walked along the familiar road from Briois, with the scent of the meadows, slowly ripening and withering at the summer's close; caught the long glimpses of the white road--lit now only by the light of the stars--indistinctly heaped, under the straight poplars, with the falling leaves, and then after the little stone bridge was passed with the liquid eyes of the stars gazing up to me as if from depthless nether worlds in the deep pools, I saw the massed houses of our village with hospitable lights shining from their windows. The urgent smell of flowers breathed from its walled gardens, and I prayed aloud that the hand of the destroyer or the cruel fury of bomb and shell and shrapnel might not invade the entrancing spot. The fresh odors--roses, heliotrope, verbena--enriched with an added effluence from the wet ground, bestowed upon the place a sort of consecration of beauty, peace, and sweetness.

I passed Privat Deschat's, and there was no light in the upper story window where he often read late into the night. I instantly caught sight of our home, where the windows of the library sent out so bright a light, that as I stood before the gate I could distinguish its occupants. Lights in other rooms shone out more timidly. The old home had doubtless gathered our group of friends, and it was an auspicious moment for me to enter. I raised the knocker and let it fall with a rub-a-dub-dub that I invariably used. I heard the running footsteps within, and the door flew open and I fell into the arms of Gabrielle.

"Alfred, Alfred. How good. O! We are glad to see you. And our friends are here, and we are all wild with anxiety to know what is being done; what is happening. Come, come," and the impatient creature pulled me into the now filled doorway of the library, where one by the other stood father and mother, Père Antoine, Père Grandin, the captain, and Privat Deschat, with Dora Destin, the little circle of our intimates, all peering with wide-open eyes at me as the bearer of new tidings, new hopes perhaps.

An embrace of mother and father and of the _Capitaine_, a hearty hand-shake of Père Grandin and Père Antoine, of good Privat Deschat, and an unreluctant kiss from the pretty Dora brought me well into the room.

"Where," I said, "is Quintado?"

"O! Monsieur Lupin," it was the half wailing voice of Dora, "He has gone to the regiment and is on his way to the front."

I looked intently at the half weeping child, and discovered a budding romance there.

"Come, come, Alfred," said the captain. "Tell us everything. Are there troops enough? Where are the robbers? We hear they are advancing along by Maubeuge in a broad front."

"And Alfred," it was the voice of Père Antoine, "the hospitals and the aids to the injured. Are they in good hands?"

"Monsieur Lupin," now it was Père Grandin, "is the Ministry together? Are we in safe hands under Viviani and Delcassé? Is Paris well guarded, and how goes the English alliance? Belgium is wiped out. Do the Russians make headway?"

I expected to hear next the shrill insistent voice of Privat Deschat, but as I turned towards him with a smile of interrogation, I saw he had withdrawn, and was moodily studying the ceiling.

"Alfred, will our credit be maintained? It is clear that the expense of the support of the armies, the purchase of stores, of munitions, the care of the wounded, will be almost ruinous. Does anyone predict how long the war will last? What are _rentes_ selling at?" It was my father who put this practical aspect of the case before me.

"But Alfred, what can we do? Everyone must help. Could I nurse? I would go gladly." I knew that sweet voice and I felt how the devoted heart which gave it utterance would sacrifice herself to the last atom of her body in the cause. It was Gabrielle.

"Alfred, you are hungry and tired. Hortense and Julie have put up for you a good dinner--the things you like, _un ragout de viande de saucisse avec les pommes de terres et les girofles_, all _bien melée_." Ah, that was the mother's voice, and there behind her at the library entrance shone the honest face of Hortense, brimming full of admiration, and the little curious _petite visage_ of Julie at her side, also admiring.

"Come, let us all go together with him in the dining room and sit around and hear him," said the disconsolate Dora.

Mother objected to that proposal and so I was whisked off under apologies, and with the strictest promise that I would be back in as short a time as possible, and then we would use up the night in talk and confidences, with mother's red wine and _les gateaux aux amandes_ to loosen our tongues.

In our old dining room under the stiff surveillance of our over-painted ancestors, with mother opposite to me, and Hortense bustling in every minute, with new contributions of _les bonnes bouches_, I sat enjoying to the uttermost the good dinner, while I told mother of the Yvettes, and of Paris, of the soldiers, the anticipated invasion of the Germans, and how the high and low, the rich and the poor, the learned and the ignorant, were standing shoulder to shoulder in the immense effort to preserve _la patrie_!

Ah! that was a famous night! How we all talked, and how I rehearsed all I had seen, all I had heard, all that I thought and, all that Yvette heard, and saw, and thought too. How defiant was the captain, how grieving the Père Antoine--who half thought that the threatened death of the Pope might stop the war!--how impatient Père Grandin, how attentive and silent was Gabrielle--waiting for them all to go to besiege me with questions and offers--and how we all became silent, stifled with a fearful dread, when the invasion of the Huns was thought of, as reaching St. Choiseul. I argued against that likelihood. The wish was indeed then the father to the thought.

"The tide of approach will be more to the north and east, and if the worst happens before our men can check the deluge, the enemy's hordes will sweep into the Paris environs directly from the east and north. Our position north-west of Paris must protect us for some time, but--of course there are possibilities."

"It can't be done," the old captain strode into the centre of the room and swung round to us as he made his point clear. "It can't be done--_c'est impossible_. Why? Because with each retreat our armies are rolled up into thicker lines, and the Germans must broaden their wings to save themselves from being out-flanked and to protect their lines of retreat and supply. It can't be done--_c'est impossible. Je vous le dit._"

Perhaps we were not persuaded--so many things might happen--but we all felt better by making up our minds that St. Choiseul was rather out of the path of danger. Then we went over plans to help, and the suggestion was made by Père Antoine that I speak at the church house, and all of St. Choiseul and Briois and the country-side around be assembled there, and a committee be formed, and work started to gather and make material for the hospitals, the Red Cross missions, and to send gifts and warm underwear to the camps.

Now it was surprising, and it gave me an almost unpleasant shock of disillusionment, that throughout the night Privat Deschat had said nothing--_absolument_. Glances fell upon him from the company, as if his voice in the talk would be welcomed, and yet, listening with an absorbed earnestness, he "never opened his mouth" (_Americain_)--_jamais il ouvrait son bouche_--and it produced the disagreeable effect of alienation, of indifference. It could not be believed. Ah--God be blessed--that cloud of doubt was quite dissolved. About, as the morning sent its streaks of red over the east, and a fresher scent invaded us from the windows, Privat Deschat stood up at the corner of the group, where he had been sitting in his, to us, unfathomable taciturnity, and in a low voice, his big face moving with unconcealed emotion said these words. It closed our council:

"You wonder that I have kept silent. It seems to you a treachery. It is not. I can say but little. I know nothing. My heart beats with yours, with that of France, but neither your hearts nor the noble heart of France will force conclusions in this matter. Fate," he cast a momentary amused glance at Père Antoine, "is not concerned with the wishes of nations, any more than with the wishes of men and women. But after all Fate can be COERCED," he spoke the word with a simulated cry of anguish--it made me start. "Force and Strength and Devotion can put Fate to flight. You may not believe it, because Fate, or the way things go, is to you," he paused, as weighing the possibility of his inclusion, "_all_--the will of God. It may be in the meanings of Fate to destroy France, but our _FAITH in France_--and that means _Force_ and _Strength_ and _Devotion_ will put that _Fate to flight_."