I remember that it was about four in the afternoon when I was sitting in the arbor under the crimson rambler, which was a glory of bloom, that Pere came and stood near by on the lawn, looking off.  With his hands in the pockets of his blue apron, he stood silent for a long time.  Then he said, “Listen to that.  They are determined to pass.  This is different from 1870.  In 1870 the Germans marched through here with their guns on their shoulders.  There was no one to oppose them.  This time it is different.  It was harvest-time that year, and they took everything, and destroyed what they did not take.  They bedded their horses in the wheat.”

You see Pere’s father was in the Franco-Prussian War, and his grandfather was with Napoleon at Moscow, where he had his feet frozen.  Pere is over seventy, and his father died at ninety-six.  Poor old Pere just hates the war.  He is as timid as a bird—­can’t kill a rabbit for his dinner.  But with the queer spirit of the French farmer he has kept right on working as if nothing were going on.  All day Saturday and all day Sunday he was busy digging stone to mend the road.

The cannonading ceased a little after six—­thirteen hours without intermission.  I don’t mind confessing to you that I hope the war is not going to give me many more days like that one.  I’d rather the battle would come right along and be done with it.  The suspense of waiting all day for that battery at Coutevroult to open fire was simply nasty.

I went to bed as ignorant of how the battle had turned as I was the night before.  Oddly enough, to my surprise, I slept, and slept well.

XV

September 8, 1914.

I did not wake on the morning of Monday, September 7,—­ yesterday,—­until I was waked by the cannon at five.  I jumped out of bed and rushed to the window.  This time there could be no doubt of it:  the battle was receding.  The cannonading was as violent, as incessant, as it had been the day before, but it was surely farther off—­to the northeast of Meaux.  It was another beautiful day.  I never saw such weather.

Amelie was on the lawn when I came down.  “They are surely retreating,” she called as soon as I appeared.

“They surely are,” I replied.  “It looks as if they were somewhere near Lizy-sur-I’Ourcq,” and that was a guess of which I was proud a little later.  I carry a map around these days as if I were an army officer.

As Amelie had not been for the milk the night before, she started off quite gayly for it.  She has to go to the other side of Voisins.  It takes her about half an hour to go and return; so—­just for the sake of doing something—­I thought I would run down the hill and see how Mile.  Henriette and the little family had got through the night.