The station employes and the police on duty at the station formed a
silent cordon, through which the departing Ambassador passed with
downcast eyes.

Not a word was spoken as the baron stood for a few minutes on the
platform.

Then the stationmaster said quietly: "_En voiture_," there was a
shrill whistle, and the train, composed of five coaches and three goods
trucks, glided slowly out of the station.




_Tuesday, August 4._


We are now in the third day of mobilization. Weather slightly cooler, 17
degrees centigrade, with moderate southwest wind.

At seven this morning I went with Sophie to the registration office for
Germans, Alsatians, and Austro-Hungarians, Number 213 Place Boulevard
Periere. A crowd of some five hundred persons--men, women, and
children--were waiting at the doors of the public schoolroom now used as
the _Siege du District_ for the seventeenth arrondissement.
Although a German by birth, Sophie is French at heart. She came to Paris
when only eight years old and has remained here ever since--she is now
sixty-one--and has been thirty-two years with me as housekeeper and
cook. All her German relatives are dead. Hers is a hard case, for if
expelled from France, she would have to become practically a stranger in