My place was laid. We dined. The doctor was grave and silent, and I feeble and dull. My cousin was the only one to talk, and she overflowed with lukewarm lamentations. What bad-luck that Geneviève should have gone back to Belfort just a week before. Would she be able to come back? I reassured her by saying that women and children would certainly be ejected. But her son-in-law, the Captain? His fate did not seem to worry her much. I remarked that he was in the first line, much exposed. "Of course!" she sighed. "Hadn't I told them often enough to try not to stay in the East!" The doctor interposed, declaring that it was the most honourable position for a soldier. Julien would most certainly not complain! He added, turning to me: "Your brother runs an even greater risk!" My brother Victor! I felt rather ashamed of not having thought of him! A lieutenant in the infantry at St. Mihiel, ten miles from the frontier. Hadn't I heard that he could be mobilised in three quarters of an hour? This detail which I put before them, drew forth shrieks from my cousin. I tried to picture Victor as parted from his wife and his little children, perhaps since this afternoon, perhaps for the last few days, to go towards the dark unknown.... Seated at this table, in front of an appetising dish of morels, I had difficulty in convincing myself of the grim reality. In order to rouse myself, I declared: "In three days, it will be my turn." "To do what?" asked my cousin. "Rejoin my regiment, of course!" "What! Are you going too?" She had a dazed look. The doctor shrugged his shoulders. "Of course he's going! At the age of twenty-seven! My dear Mathilde, you don't seem to have any idea...." She acknowledged frankly that she did indeed understand nothing.... But when I had told her again that in three days' time I was going to report myself at F----, whence I should be sent to fight, she seemed thunder-struck, poor soul! I should never have suspected her of being so fond of me; she had known me ever since I was quite tiny, and I was the son of her poor lost Blanche, one of her own people, a blood relation, and dearer to her than her son-in-law, I could see ... she began to bewail herself, cursing the relentless fate against our family. The doctor had to cut it short, a little sharply: "Look here, don't discourage the boy!" I was not displeased when she stopped talking; too much attention always worried me; moreover it occurred to me--a false, but unpleasant impression--that I was making an unfair appeal to her compassion. During dessert, while my uncle was uncorking a bottle of wine, I studied the railway-guide. The 6:50 train ought to get me to Paris at four o'clock, but the time-tables would probably all be upset. It would be wiser to be at the station from six o'clock onwards, and to wait. My cousin sympathised: "You'll have to be up very early."