After dinner, naturally, I went to the military tattoo, at which, by an unpardonable indifference, I have not regularly been present, although these patriotic demonstrations have been organized by Monsieur Joseph Boneas and his League of Avengers.  A long-drawn shudder, shrill and sonorous, took flight through the main streets, filling the spectators and especially the young folks, with enthusiasm for the great and glorious deeds of the future.  And Petrolus, in the front row of the crowd, was striding along in the crimson glow of the fairy-lamps—­clad in a visionary uniform of red.

I remember that I talked a great deal that evening in our quarter, and then in the house.  Our quarter is something like all towns, something like all country-sides, something like it is everywhere—­it is a foreshortened picture of all societies in the old universe, as my life is a picture of life.

CHAPTER IX

THE STORM

“There’s going to be war,” said Benoit, on our doorsteps in July.

“No,” said Crillon, who was there, too, “I know well enough there’ll be war some day, seeing there’s always been war after war since the world was a world, and therefore there’ll be another; but just now—­at once—­a big job like that?  Nonsense!  It’s not true.  No.”

Some days went by, tranquilly, as days do.  Then the great story reappeared, increased and branched out in all directions.  Austria, Serbia, the ultimatum, Russia.  The notion of war was soon everywhere.  You could see it distracting men and slackening their pace in the going and coming of work.  One divined it behind the doors and windows of the houses.

One Saturday evening, when Marie and I—­like most of the French—­did not know what to think, and talked emptily, we heard the town crier, who performs in our quarter, as in the villages.

“Ah!” she said.

We went out and saw in the distance the back of the man who was tapping a drum.  His smock was ballooned.  He seemed pushed aslant by the wind, stiffening himself in the summer twilight to sound his muffled roll.  Although we could not see him well and scarcely heard him, his progress through the street had something grand about it.

Some people grouped in a corner said to us, “The mobilization.”

No other word left their lips.  I went from group to group to form an opinion, but people drew back with sealed faces, or mechanically raised their arms heavenwards.  And we knew no better what to think now that we were at last informed.

We went back into the court, the passage, the room, and then I said to Marie, “I go on the ninth day—­a week, day after to-morrow—­to my depot at Motteville.”

She looked at me, as though doubtful.

I took my military pay book from the wardrobe and opened it on the table.  Leaning against each other, we looked chastely at the red page where the day of my joining was written, and we spelled it all out as if we were learning to read.