of the children confided to their care.  Near them were the men who had brought their papers down into the garden under the impression that they could read them in the midst of peaceful groves.  All of the benches were full.  A few women were occupying camp stools with that feeling of superiority which ownership always confers.  The iron chairs, “pay-seats,” were serving as resting places for various suburban dames, loaded down with packages, who were waiting for straggling members of their families in order to take the train in the Gare Saint Lazare. . . .

And Julio, in his special delivery letter, had proposed meeting in this place, supposing that it would be as little frequented as in former times.  She, too, with the same thoughtlessness, had in her reply, set the usual hour of five o’clock, believing that after passing a few minutes in the Printemps or the Galeries on the pretext of shopping, she would be able to slip over to the unfrequented garden without risk of being seen by any of her numerous acquaintances.

Desnoyers was enjoying an almost forgotten sensation, that of strolling through vast spaces, crushing as he walked the grains of sand under his feet.  For the past twenty days his rovings had been upon planks, following with the automatic precision of a riding school the oval promenade on the deck of a ship.  His feet accustomed to insecure ground, still were keeping on terra firma a certain sensation of elastic unsteadiness.  His goings and comings were not awakening the curiosity of the people seated in the open, for a common preoccupation seemed to be monopolizing all the men and women.  The groups were exchanging impressions.  Those who happened to have a paper in their hands, saw their neighbors approaching them with a smile of interrogation.  There had suddenly disappeared that distrust and suspicion which impels the inhabitants of large cities mutually to ignore one another, taking each other’s measure at a glance as though they were enemies.

“They are talking about the war,” said Desnoyers to himself.  “At this time, all Paris speaks of nothing but the possibility of war.”

Outside of the garden he could see also the same anxiety which was making those around him so fraternal and sociable.  The venders of newspapers were passing through the boulevard crying the evening editions, their furious speed repeatedly slackened by the eager hands of the passers-by contending for the papers.  Every reader was instantly surrounded by a group begging for news or trying to decipher over his shoulder the great headlines at the top of the sheet.  In the rue des Mathurins, on the other side of the square, a circle of workmen under the awning of a tavern were listening to the comments of a friend who accompanied his words with oratorical gestures and wavings of the paper.  The traffic in the streets, the general bustle of the city was the same as in other days, but it seemed to Julio that the vehicles were whirling past more rapidly, that there was a feverish agitation in the air and that people were speaking and smiling in a different way.  The women of the garden were looking even at him as if they had seen him in former days.  He was able to approach them and begin a conversation without experiencing the slightest strangeness.