heard an aeroplane overhead. Everyone stopped short and looked
up. Some fool called "Une Taube--une Taube!" People already inside
the station turned and ran back to see. Of course, it wasn't a Taube.
Still, the fact that someone said it was, and that everyone ran out to
look up at it, was significant, as I am sure they would have done just
the same if it had really been a German machine.

We came back even more slowly than we had gone up. It took ten
minutes by my watch to cross the bridge at Chalifère. We jigged a bit
and stopped; staggered a bit, and trembled, and stopped; crawled a
bit, and whistled. I had a feeling that if anyone disobeyed the order
pasted on every window, and leaned out, we should topple over into
the stream. Still, no one seemed to mind. With the curtains drawn,
everyone tried to read, by the dim light, a newspaper. It is remarkable
how even ordinary people face danger if a panic can be prevented.
The really great person is the one who even in a panic does not lose
his head, and the next best thing to not being feazed at danger is, I
believe, to be literally paralyzed. Total immobility often passes for
pluck.

It was nearly half past eight when we reached Esbly; the town was
absolutely dark. Père was there with the donkey cart, and it took
nearly an hour and a half to climb the hill to Huiry. It was pitch dark,
and oh, so cold! Both Condé and Voisins, as well as Esbly, had street
lamps--gas--before the war, but it was cut off when mobilization
began, and so the road was black. This ordinary voyage seemed like
journeying in a wilderness, and I was as tired as if I had been to
London, which I take to be the hardest trip for the time it consumes
that I know. I used to go to London in seven hours, and this trip to
Paris and back had taken four hours and a half by train and three by