The atmosphere was heavy and thunderous when I got out at the Gare de l'Est, but the great city of Paris was calm. Oh, Paris, once I had feared so much for you when this terrible moment should come; your excitability, your fits of passion, your very ardour, which might be treason's opportunity. And now the hour had come and not even assassination had shaken your quiet resolution, the assassination of the man who had boasted that he could start or stop revolution at his will. My mobilization orders had disappeared in the fire at the castle of Lautenburg, but that didn't worry me much. I knew them by heart and decided to leave next morning to rejoin the 18th Infantry at Pau. I put on my uniform in a hotel bedroom and then, walking through the Rue Lafayette, I made for the centre of the city. People were much more excited than noisy. There were a good many soldiers about, already officers like myself, but all of them had on their arms mothers or wives who looked into their eyes with an indescribable expression of pride and tenderness. But I was lonely and alone on that tragic evening, even more lonely in that city than on the night when I had left it. I hadn't as yet any notion whither I was wending my way. But I began to have some inkling when I had reached the Rue Royale with its brilliantly lit terraces swarming with people. As I passed Weber's I thought of Clotilde. "It's August. She hasn't got her white fox now. She must be wearing a light silk blouse...." Then memories of the girl filled me with loathing. A pall of shadow was beginning to settle on the trees of the Champs-Elysées under the darkening sky. I turned to the right and chose the little alleys which remind you of a watering-place with their trees and casinos. Cars stopped with a jerk before well-lit restaurants. Commissionaires opened their doors. I had reached the Avenue Gabriel, a dark tunnel of foliage. I walked up it slowly. A feeling of unutterable anguish invaded my whole being. Soon I saw lights in a restaurant window. On the door of that restaurant I read the word "Laurent." I sat down opposite that door, on the bench I knew I should find there. My fingers groped over the rough surface of the back, striking here and there the round, flat heads of the big nails. At last they stopped. They had found what they wanted. I leaned down and had no difficulty, though it was now quite dark, in deciphering the three marks, those three letters "A. A. E." which the little Tumene princess had once carved there. EPILOGUE "My story is told," said Vignerte. He lapsed into silence and I respected his feelings. Then, little by little, we both felt our thoughts wandering from the tragedy he had just conjured up and concentrate on that other drama that was about to be unfolded before our eyes. It was a quarter to six. It was not yet light, though we felt that day was at hand. The four runners, one for each section, had silently come up behind.