Maxime however persisted,—­doctus cum libro,—­arguing that from one thing to another, this shock no matter how distant, might bring about a general explosion; but Clerambault, who was beginning to come out of his pleasant trance, smiled calmly, and said that nothing would happen.

“It is only a bluff,” he declared, “like so many we have had for the last thirty years; we get them regularly every spring and summer; just bullying and sabre-rattling.”  People did not believe in war, no one wanted it; war had been proved to be impossible,—­it was a bugbear that must be got out of the heads of free democracies ... and he enlarged on this theme.  The night was calm and sweet; all around familiar sounds and sights; the chirp of crickets in the fields, a glow-worm shining in the grass,—­delicious perfume of honey-suckle.  Far away the noise of a distant train; the little fountain tinkled, and in the moonless sky revolved the luminous track of the light on the Eiffel Tower.

The two women went into the house, and Maxime, tired of sitting down, ran about the garden with his little dog, while through the open windows floated out an air of Schumann’s, which Rosine, full of timid emotion, was playing on the piano.  Clerambault left alone, threw himself back in his wicker chair, glad to be a man, to be alive, breathing in the balm of this summer night with a thankful heart.

Six days later ...  Clerambault had spent the afternoon in the woods, and like the monk in the legend, lying under an oak tree, drinking in the song of a lark, a hundred years might have gone by him like a day.  He could not tear himself away till night-fall.  Maxime met him in the vestibule; he came forward smiling but rather pale, and said:  “Well, Papa, we are in for it this time!” and he told him the news.  The Russian mobilisation, the state of war in Germany;—­Clerambault stared at him unable to comprehend, his thoughts were so far removed from these dark follies.  He tried to dispute the facts, but the news was explicit, and so they went to the table, where Clerambault could eat but little.

He sought for reasons why these two crimes should lead to nothing.  Common-sense, public opinion, the prudence of governments, the repeated assurances of the socialists, Jaures’ firm stand;—­Maxime let him talk, he was thinking of other things,—­like his dog with his ears pricked up for the sounds of the night ...Such a pure lovely night!  Those who recall the last evenings of July, 1914, and the even more beautiful evening of the first day of August, must keep in their minds the wonderful splendour of Nature, as with a smile of pity she stretched out her arms to the degraded, self-devouring human race.

It was nearly ten o’clock when Clerambault ceased to talk, for no one had answered him.  They sat then in silence with heavy hearts, listlessly occupied or seeming to be, the women with their work, Clerambault with his eyes, but not his mind, on a book.  Maxime went out on the porch and smoked, leaning on the railing and looking down on the sleeping garden and the fairy-like play of the light and shadows on the path.