le Maire,"
for my host, amongst other things, was mayor of the little
neighbouring town, and added with a despairing gesture, "Helas! C'est
la guerre!" showing us the official telegram from Paris. We at once
landed and accompanied the station-master up to the house, where our
host was dumbfounded at the news, for, like me, he had continued to
hope against hope. Five minutes later he was knotting the official
tricolour scarf round his waist, for it fell to his duty as Maire to
read the Decree of Mobilisation in the town, and I accompanied him
there. I shall never forget that sight. Sobbing and weeping women
everywhere; the older men, who remembered 1870 and knew what this
mobilisation meant, endeavouring to master their emotion and to keep
up an appearance of calm; the younger men, who were to be thrust into
the furnace, standing dazed and anxious-eyed at the prospect of the
unknown to-morrow which they were to face. My host, after reading the
Decree, added a few words of his own, such words as appeal to the
French temperament; brief, full of hope and courage, and breathing
that intensely passionate love of France which lies at the bottom of
every French soul. The Maire then ordered the _tocsin_ to be sounded in
half an hour's time, when it would also ring out from every church
steeple in France.
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