While to-day! People were wandering about, plenty of them, it's true, standing in front of the posters, theatres, and picture palaces, thronging the open-air cafés, but you might have thought they had come out on this summer evening solely for the sake of enjoying a breath of the mild air. They talked quietly among themselves as they walked up and down, or read the papers with an air of distrustful wisdom, perfectly well aware that they were not being told everything. One might have imagined oneself back in the days of the floods of 1910, when the Parisian public would learn with apparent indifference that such and such a quarter of their city was threatened with extinction. An irritating attitude in a crowd, at a time when--now or never--it should have been moved, uplifted, carried away by great inspirations. Who would believe that I asked myself in all seriousness if France must be despaired of, if our country had not come to such a pass that there was nothing to be done but to strike her off the map of Europe, the victim as Hellas was of yore, of her excess of philosophy...? This idea was distasteful to me.... But still! If there was nothing to be done but to resign ourselves! We should go and start life again elsewhere, in some free country like America.... Those who got out alive! I still hoped to be among them. The thought also crossed my mind that we were taking part in a renewal of the hardy and unassuming, the gay and tranquil qualities, which were the attributes of our race.... We had not always been the most highly-strung people of the world; during the forty years of peace we had recaptured our gifts; peace-lovers by nature and only entering the lists under provocation, and in our own defence, perhaps we were to astonish the universe anew by our valiance. Why not? The hypothesis appealed to my sense of vanity. Oh well, we should see, we should see! Should I have retained any misgivings if my walk had led me to the outskirts of the Gare de L'Est, where the people of Paris were beginning to set such a sublime example of steadfastness, and dignity? CHAPTER VIII MY FATHER Seven o'clock struck. I did not forget that I was dining in the Rue des Beaux-Arts, and hurried towards the left bank of the river. On the way I wondered what had dictated this visit? Was it filial affection? Not at all. I was simply acting in accordance with a banal convention. My father had never taken any interest in me, even when quite tiny. As my health, which was poor at that time, had prevented his thinking me fit to be made into a soldier, I had been practically non-existent in his eyes. Victor, my elder by two years, was everything to him. He had him educated at La Flêche, though it cost him a lot, in order to steep him, from his childhood, in military ideal and discipline.