VI



August 2, 1914.


Well, dear, what looked impossible is evidently coming to pass.

Early yesterday morning the garde champetre--who is the only thing in
the way of a policeman that we have--marched up the road beating his
drum. At every crossroad he stopped and read an order. I heard him at
the foot of the hill, but I waited for him to pass. At the top of the
hill he stopped to paste a bill on the door of the carriage-house on
Pere Abelard's farm. You can imagine me,--in my long studio apron, with
my head tied up in a muslin cap,--running up the hill to join the group
of poor women of the hamlet, to read the proclamation to the armies of
land and sea--the order for the mobilization of the French military and
naval forces--headed by its crossed French flags. It was the first
experience in my life of a thing like that. I had a cold chill down my
spine as I realized that it was not so easy as I had thought to separate
myself from Life. We stood there together--a little group of women--and
silently read it through--this command for the rising up of a Nation.
No need for the men to read it. Each with his military papers in his
pocket knew the moment he heard the drum what it meant, and knew equally
well his place. I was a foreigner among them, but I forgot that, and if