We turned out about 3, the morning of September 2nd.  It was quite dark and bitterly cold.  Very sleepily indeed we rode along an exiguous path by the side of the cobbles.  The sun had risen, but it was still cold when we rattled into that diabolical city of lost souls, Dammartin.

Nobody spoke as we entered.  Indeed there were only a few haggard, ugly old women, each with a bit of a beard and a large goitre.  One came up to me and chattered at me.  Then suddenly she stopped and rushed away, still gibbering.  We asked for a restaurant.  A stark, silent old man, with a goitre, pointed out an estaminet.  There we found four motionless men, who looked up at us with expressionless eyes.  Chilled, we withdrew into the street.  Silent, melancholy soldiers—­the H.Q. of some army or division—­were marching miserably out.  We battered at the door of a hotel for twenty minutes.  We stamped and cursed and swore, but no one would open.  Only a hideous and filthy crowd stood round, and not one of them moved a muscle.  Finally, we burst into a bare little inn, and had such a desolate breakfast of sour wine, bread, and bully.  We finished as soon as we could to leave the nightmare place.  Even the houses were gaunt and ill-favoured.

On our way out we came across a deserted motor-cycle.  Some one suggested sending it on by train, until some one else remarked that there were no trains, and this was fifteen miles from Paris.

We cut across country, rejoined the column, and rode with it to Vinantes, passing on the way a lost motor-lorry.  The driver was tearing his hair in an absolute panic.  We told him the Germans were just a few miles along the road; but we wished we hadn’t when, in hurriedly reversing to escape, he sent a couple of us into the ditch.

At Vinantes we “requisitioned” a car, some chickens, and a pair of boots.  There was a fusty little tavern down the street, full of laughing soldiers.  In the corner a fat, middle-aged woman sat weeping quietly on a sack.  The host, sullen and phlegmatic, answered every question with a shake of the head and a muttered “N’importe.”  The money he threw contemptuously on the counter.  The soldiers thought they were spies.  “As speaking the langwidge,” I asked him what the matter was.

     “They say, sir, that this village will be shelled by the
     cursed Germans, and the order has gone out to evacuate.”

Then, suddenly his face became animated, and he told me volubly how he had been born in the village, how he had been married there, how he had kept the estaminet for twenty years, how all the leading men of the village came of an evening and talked over the things that were happening in Paris.

He started shouting, as men will—­

     “What does it matter what I sell, what I receive?  What does
     it matter, for have I not to leave all this?”

Then his wife came up and put her hand on his arm—­