. . . We are embarked on the adventure, without any dominant feeling
except perhaps a sufficiently calm acceptance of this fatality. But
sensibility is kept awake by the sight of the victims, particularly the
refugees. Poor people, truly uprooted, or rather, dead leaves in the
storm, little souls in great circumstances.

Whole trains of cattle-trucks, which can hardly be said to have changed
their use! Trains in which is heaped up the desolation of these people
torn from their homes, and how quickly become as beasts! Misery has
stripped them of all their human attributes. We take them food and
drink, and that is how they become exposed: the man drinks without
remembering his wife and children. The woman thinks of her child. But
other women take their time, unable to share in the general haste. Among
these waifs there is one who assails my heart,--a grandmother of
eighty-seven, shaken, tossed about by all these blows, being by turns
hoisted into and let down from the rolling cages. So trembling and
disabled, so lost. . . .


_September 10_ (from a note-book).

We arrive in a new part of the country on the track of good news: the
strong impression is that France's future is henceforth assured.
Everything corroborates this feeling, from the official report which
formally announces a complete success down to the most fantastic
rumours.


_September 13_ (from a note-book).