I departed then for Switzerland where I enjoyed a delightful fortnight.  The rebound from my depression imparted a fine morale.  Switzerland was practically deserted, no French or Germans were there for they had enough to do with the war; the English for the most part stayed at home, for Europe could only be crossed with difficulty, and the crowd from America too was deterred by the danger.  Instead of the throngs at the great points of interest, the visitors counted by twos and threes.  The guides and landlords were obsequious.  We few strangers had the Alps to ourselves and they were as lavish of their splendours to the handful as to the multitude.  At Geneva at last I found letters from home which caused me anxiety; I was referred for later news to letters which were to be sent to Paris; so there was nothing for it but for me to cross France, though by that time France had become a camp.  Fortunately I had met in Switzerland an American friend who was proficient in French as I was not and who likewise found it necessary to go to Paris, and we two started together.  After crossing the frontier we found no regular trains; those that ran were taken up for the most part by the multitudes of conscripts hurrying into armies that were undergoing disaster in the neighbourhood of Metz.  The case of two American strangers was a precarious one involved in such a mass, with food even very uncertain and the likelihood of being side-tracked at any station, but we were both strong and light-hearted and I felt at my waist-band the comfortable contact of my bright yellow Napoleons which would pull us through.  Constantly we beheld scenes of the greatest interest.  The August landscape smiled its best about us, we passed Dijon and many another old storied city famous in former wars, and now again humming with the military life with which they had been so many times familiar.  The Mobiles came thronging to every depot from the vineyards and fields and the remoter villages.  As yet they were usually in picturesque peasant attire, young farmers in blouses or with bretelles crossing in odd fashion the queer shirts they wore.  Careless happy-go-lucky boys chattering in the excitement of the new life which they were entering, only half-informed as to the catastrophes which were taking place, but the mothers and sisters, plain country women in short skirts, quaint bodices and caps, looked upon their departure with anxious faces.  I was familiar enough with such scenes in our own Civil War; thousands of those boys were never to return.

Reaching Paris we found an atmosphere of depression.  A week or two before the streets had resounded with the Marseillaise and echoed with the fierce cry, “A Berlin!  A Berlin!” That confidence had all passed, I heard the Marseillaise sung only once, and that in disheartened perfunctory fashion, perhaps by order of the authorities in a futile attempt to stimulate courage that was waning.  Rage and