Page:The drama of three hundred and sixty-five days.djvu/66

 THE SOUL OF FRANCE T when the men had gone there came that anxious silence in which every ear was strained to catch the first cry from the army. Would it be victory or defeat? In the strength of her new-born spirit France was ready for either fate. The streets of Paris were darkened; the theatres were shut up; the cafes were ordered to close at nine o'clock; the sale of absinthe was prohibited that Frenchmen might have every faculty alert to meet their destiny; and the principal hotels were transformed into hospitals for the wounded that would surely come.

They came. We were allowed to see their coming, and in those early days of the war, before the Red Cross companies had got properly to work, the return of the first of the fallen among the French soldiery made a terrible spectacle. At suburban stations, generally in the middle of the night, long lines of third-class railway carriages, as well as rectangular, box-shaped cattle wagons, such as in conscript countries are used for purposes of mobilization, would draw up out of the darkness.

Instantly hundreds of pale, wasted, generally bearded, and often wounded faces would appear at the windows, crying out for coffee or chocolate. Then the cattle wagons would be unbolted, and the great doors thrown back, disclosing six or 62