Something of this sense of exaltation seemed to penetrate the throngs who streamed up and down the Boulevards till late into the night.  All wheeled traffic had ceased, except that of the rare taxi-cabs impressed to carry conscripts to the stations; and the middle of the Boulevards was as thronged with foot-passengers as an Italian market-place on a Sunday morning.  The vast tide swayed up and down at a slow pace, breaking now and then to make room for one of the volunteer “legions” which were forming at every corner:  Italian, Roumanian, South American, North American, each headed by its national flag and hailed with cheering as it passed.  But even the cheers were sober:  Paris was not to be shaken out of her self-imposed serenity.  One felt something nobly conscious and voluntary in the mood of this quiet multitude.  Yet it was a mixed throng, made up of every class, from the scum of the Exterior Boulevards to the cream of the fashionable restaurants.  These people, only two days ago, had been leading a thousand different lives, in indifference or in antagonism to each other, as alien as enemies across a frontier:  now workers and idlers, thieves, beggars, saints, poets, drabs and sharpers, genuine people and showy shams, were all bumping up against each other in an instinctive community of emotion.  The “people,” luckily, predominated; the faces of workers look best in such a crowd, and there were thousands of them, each illuminated and singled out by its magnesium-flash of passion.

I remember especially the steady-browed faces of the women; and also the small but significant fact that every one of them had remembered to bring her dog.  The biggest of these amiable companions had to take their chance of seeing what they could through the forest of human legs; but every one that was portable was snugly lodged in the bend of an elbow, and from this safe perch scores and scores of small serious muzzles, blunt or sharp, smooth or woolly, brown or grey or white or black or brindled, looked out on the scene with the quiet awareness of the Paris dog.  It was certainly a good sign that they had not been forgotten that night.

II

We had been shown, impressively, what it was to live through a mobilization; now we were to learn that mobilization is only one of the concomitants of martial law, and that martial law is not comfortable to live under—­at least till one gets used to it.

At first its main purpose, to the neutral civilian, seemed certainly to be the wayward pleasure of complicating his life; and in that line it excelled in the last refinements of ingenuity.  Instructions began to shower on us after the lull of the first days:  instructions as to what to do, and what not to do, in order to make our presence tolerable and our persons secure.  In the first place, foreigners could not remain in France without satisfying the authorities as to their nationality and antecedents; and to do