The soup was brought in. I urged him to talk. He did not wait to be asked twice. He had a good word for several of our politicians--an astounding thing for him!--for the abettors of the "_loi de 3 ans_," for the President of the Republic, for the President of the Council. This mobilisation order was a good answer to the German measures! Tit for tat! The rogues, we had our eye on them! Hour by hour we knew all they were plotting and planning!... My father declared that he had gone over completely to the Government. At such a time all differences must be sunk. It struck me that he had gleaned these doctrines from his newspaper. I admired the eternal authority of commonplaces. I suddenly saw him searching his pockets. He had received a letter from St. Mihiel this morning, as on every morning since the outbreak of the crisis. He handed it to me. "It's from Geneviève." "Has Victor gone?" "He went four days ago." Mobilisation had not been expected over there. It was on Thursday, the 30th, in the middle of the night that Geneviève, standing at her window, her head framed by those of her two little children, had seen her husband march away proudly, with raised sword, at the head of his company. This vision intoxicated my father. It did not leave me indifferent. And, like him, I approved of the steadfast, confident tone of the young wife's letter. As to leaving St. Mihiel, she wrote, such a thought had never entered their heads! "She's quite right," said my father; "the Prussians will never get there; they'll soon be sent back again. You know we've already got seven hundred thousand men on the frontier." He added: "And Victor in the first line." His first-born, the re-incarnation of his imperious youth! The old man's bellicose imagination rode along at his side. He explained to me how, since the other day, he followed him hour by hour; he saw him, having taken up his position on a spur of Mont-Secq, watching the Woevre where the cavalry would soon be engaged. Though not very familiar with the topography of this region, I understood the rôle assigned to the covering forces, to hold on at all costs, in front of the Côtes de Meuse even if attacked by forces ten times superior in number, while the concentration went on behind the hills. "A dangerous task, that!" "Yes," said my father. "Most of them will stay there."