Germany, especially, inspired me with no enmity; on the contrary, I had a weakness for the genius of her philosophers and musicians. Two years ago I had travelled in the country, and had stayed at Iéna for three weeks with one of my friends, a lecturer at the university. We had wandered together in the Thuringian forests, and slept, rolled in our cloaks, at the top of the Schnee-Kopf. How could one fail to be won over by those glorious surroundings. As for the men over there ... I had pleasant recollections of a few merry shooting friends, one named Kroemer among others. If they had not appealed to me as a whole, did any one by any chance imagine that I cherished the slightest sympathy for the millions of beings--ugly, vain, and unintelligent--who made up the great majority of the nation which was mine by birth. In Paris it was true that, within a restricted circle, I experienced certain satisfactions which I should hardly have relished anywhere else. But, when finally analysed, even these delights did not amount to very much! They comprised the one real benefit which I owed to my position as a Frenchman. In order to assure the continuation of this advantage--and what, after all, did it amount to--it was agreed that I should sacrifice my one irretrievable treasure, my life. You can see with what a decision I seemed to be faced, but oddly enough my revolt continued to be purely theoretical and abstract. Not for an instant did it seem to me possible or within my power to take the line simply of ignoring the fact that my country was mobilising. I saw myself as the conscious victim of a superior fatality; I knew that I should take the 6:50 train next day, that I should be at the Chanzy barracks before ten o'clock on Tuesday! But that did not prevent me from cursing at fate. Tired of grumbling at myself, I consigned to perdition the instigators of the war. Spite blinded me; I kept on revolving most bitter, and I must admit, most unjust reflections. Yes, as Cipollina had said; what an accumulation of mistakes! For a long while back. It was all very well to say that Germany wanted war; was preparing for it! During the last few years perhaps. But had there not been a time when she had made advances to us? We had always refused to make friends, and had kept our eyes fixed stolidly on the Frankfort Treaty in which we pretended to see the one and only source of all our ills. Our policy, of late, had become more captious. There had been a series of clumsy manifestos, an awakening, which one could not shut one's eyes to, of the old swashbuckling, nationalistic, and chauvinistic spirit. What countless occurrences, speeches, and articles had gone towards the making of a dangerous state of exaltation. Anything rather than a humiliating peace! Anything? That meant war. Oh well, they'd got it. They'd soon see!