Le Mée nodded assent, and we hurried to the window. In the street below, near the artillery barracks, surged a dense crowd. All faces reflected the same expression of stupor, anxiety, and bewilderment. In the eyes of all shone the same strange gleam. Women's voices were heard--voices that quavered and broke.... "Well, Le Mée, here's to your health and let's hope that in a few months we shall have another drink together!" "Here's luck to us both!" Grasping our swords we ran back to the barracks. That night we once again slept in our beds. _Sunday, August 2_ My kit was ready. I had rolled up some handkerchiefs in my cloak. A sergeant came in: "Now then, all of you go to the office!" The sergeant began distributing the record books and identity discs. On one side of mine was inscribed: "Paul Lintier," and, underneath, "E.V. (engagé volontaire) Cl. 1913"; on the other: "Mayenne 1179." A fly was buzzing about in the office. For one moment there rose up before me a vision of a battlefield--with dead men lying stretched out on the edge of a pit, and a non-commissioned officer hastily identifying them before burial. The "Great Event" had at last come to break the monotony of our barrack life, and no one thought of anything else. It was almost as if a sort of blindness prevented us from looking ahead and confined each man's attention to the preparations for departure. This indifference astonished me, and yet I myself shared it. Was it decision or courage? To a certain extent, perhaps.... Did we really believe there was going to be war? I am not too sure of it. It was impossible to realize what war would be--to gauge the whole horror of it. And so we were not afraid. From one of the barrack windows I saw the following scene: A young man, promptly called up by the general mobilization, had just come out of a house opposite. He was walking backwards, shading his eyes from the sun in order to see the face of some one dear to him who stood at one of the second-floor windows. A fair-haired woman, very young and extremely pale, watched him with longing eyes from behind the muslin curtains, doubtless afraid to let him see her distraught face and tear-stained cheeks. She was standing close behind the curtains, her hand on her breast, with the fingers spasmodically stretched out in an attitude eloquent of grief. As he was about to disappear from view in a bend of the road, she suddenly opened the window wide, and showed herself for an instant. The man could not see her. She took two unsteady steps backwards, and sank into an arm-chair, where she sat huddled up, her face in her hands, and her shoulders shaken with sobs. Then, in the semi-darkness of the room, I caught sight of a servant with a Breton cap carrying a baby to her.... * * * * * At noon we left the barracks in order to take up the quarters which had been assigned to us a little way down the Avenue de Pontlieue.