At about six o’clock we arrived at the station of L., where the train stopped for a few minutes.  The platforms were crowded with Staff officers.  A soldier assured me that the chief Headquarters were here.  I wanted to question some one and try to get some authoritative information as to what was happening at the Front.  It seemed to me that I had a right to know, now that I was on the point of becoming one of the actors in the tragedy in progress a few leagues off.  But directly I came up to these officers I felt my assurance fail me.  They looked disturbed and anxious.  There was none of that merry animation that had reigned in the interior and that I had expected to find everywhere.

And then a strange and ridiculous fear came over me; the fear of being looked upon as an intruder by these well-informed men who knew everything.  I imagined that they would spurn me with scorn, or that I should cause them pain by forcing them to tell me truths people do not like to repeat.  It also occurred to me that I was too insignificant a person to confront men so high in office, and that I should appear importunate if I disturbed their reflections.  But I was now quite sure that the official announcements had not told us all.  Without having heard one word, I felt that things were not going so well as we had hoped, as every day in our little town in the west we tried passionately to divine the truth, devouring the few newspapers that reached us.

A pang shot through me.  I now felt alone and lost amongst these men who seemed strangers to me.  Crossing the rails, I got back to our train, drawn up at some distance from the platforms.  The sun was on the horizon.  In the red sky two monoplanes passed over our heads at no great height.  The noise of their engines made everybody look up.  They were flying north.  And I felt a desire to rush upwards and overtake one of them and take my seat close to the pilot, behind the propeller which was spinning round and sending the wind of its giddy speed into his face.  I longed to be able to lift myself into the air above the battlefields, and there, suspended in space, try to make out the movements of the clashing nations.

I resolved to have a talk with the engine-driver of a train returning to Paris empty.  He told me in a few words that the French army was retreating rapidly, that it had already recrossed the Belgian frontier, and that at that moment it was fighting on French soil.  He told me this simply, with a touch of sadness in his voice, shaking his head gently.  He added no comments of his own, and I did not feel equal to any reply.  Full of foreboding, I returned to my train and Wattrelot.  He had heard what the engine-driver had told me, and he said not a word, but looked out into the distance at the fiery sky.  We sat down side by side and said nothing.