How silent this Paris is, this special part of Paris, of houses that close proud heavy doors upon all they feel, of streets withdrawn from thronging and demonstration. In my room it is like waking to the silence that is beyond the end of the world. So this is one way war begins, not with shouting and singing, but with a great silence. Monday, August 3rd They go. They all go. There is nothing I can say of it. I can only feel it, as they go. I, I am a stranger, I have no part in it. I have no right to agony and pride. I went and sat on a bench in the Cour la Reine, where already the leaves are falling. One of my friends came and met me there, and we sat on the bench together, where the yellow leaves fell slowly. We never talked at all. Her husband had gone the night before. She said, "I am so glad that it is _now_, when my boy is just a baby." She said, "I have prayed, and prayed, all these days, if it has got to be, let it be now, when my son is just a baby." Tuesday, August 4th Other people will write beautiful things of it--it is so beautiful. How beautiful it is, this going forth of all that is young and gay and fearless, of all that means our ideal and our faith, without singing and shouting, to battle. There are no grand words, they only go. And none of the women cry, till afterwards. You see them laughing as they help their boys carry the bundles. And you see them coming home through the streets afterwards, each one alone and proud, crying quite noiselessly. Sometimes the people who feel things most, remember only the smallest things. There was an old woman with a push-cart full of pears, this morning, in the rue Boissy d'Anglas, who ran and ran as fast as she could, panting, out of breath, to give her pears, all of them, to the blue boys of an infantry regiment passing with their blankets and knapsacks. I remember that, and that it was a beautiful blue-and-gold day, with a flaming, thundering sunset. Wednesday, August 5th I keep thinking back over those last days of peace, that were so precious, and nobody knew. The Sunday that was to be the last, what memories has it given the women to treasure, the men to carry away with them? Memories of such small absurd things have become sacred, or become terrible. The men may lose those memories in their great spaces of battle, but the women must stay with them in the rooms. Against the great background of these days it is queer what small absurd things stand out. The greatest days of all the world--and how terribly worried we are that Louis has gone off without his little package of twenty-four hours' provision, the bread and chocolate and little flask. It was ready for him and on the table in the hall, and every one forgot it; and he was gone, and there it was, a ridiculous thing to sob over.