I don't know whether he hears anything or not. But there was a time when he did hear. He is silent, Pierre, and he furiously denies war. He denies it by work--he works alone in the garden as if nothing had happened. Our house is full of refugees. Mamma and everyone else in the house are busy, feeding them, washing the children--mamma is washing them--but he does not seem to notice anything. He denies war! Now he is bursting from anxiety to hear or guess what we are saying, but do you see the expression of his face? If you start to talk to him he will go away. PIERRE François! EMIL GRELIEU Don't bother him. He wants to be crafty. Perhaps he hears us. You ask me what mother is thinking of. Do I know? Who can tell? You see that she is not here, and yet these are your last hours at home. Yes, in this house--I am speaking of the house. She is young and resolute as ever, she walks just as lightly and is just as clear-headed, but she is not here. She is simply not here, Pierre. PIERRE Is she concealing something? EMIL GRELIEU No, she is not concealing anything, but she has gone into the depths of her own self, where all is silence and mystery. She is living through her motherhood again, from the very beginning--do you understand? when you and Maurice were not yet born--but in this she is crafty, like François. Sometimes I see clearly that she is suffering unbearably, that she is terrified by the war--. But she smiles in answer and then I see something else--I see how there has suddenly awakened in her the prehistoric woman--the woman who handed her husband the fighting club--. Wait, the soldiers are coming again! _Military music is heard in the distance, nearing._ PIERRE Yes, according to the assignment, it is the Ninth Regiment. EMIL GRELIEU Let us hear it, Pierre. I hear this music several times a day. There it starts on the right, and there it dies down. Always there. _They listen._ But they are brave fellows! PIERRE Yes. _Both listen attentively at the window. François looks at them askance and tries in vain to hear. The music begins to die out._ EMIL GRELIEU _Walking away from the window._ Yesterday they played the "Marseillaise." But they are brave fellows! _Emil Grelieu's wife enters quickly._ JEANNE Do you hear it? How beautiful! Even our refugees smiled when they heard it. Emil, I have brought you some telegrams, here. I have read them. EMIL GRELIEU What is it? Let me have them! _Reading the telegrams, he staggers to an armchair and sinks into it. He turns pale._ PIERRE What is it, father? EMIL GRELIEU Read! _Pierre reads it over the shoulder of his father. The woman looks at them with an enigmatical expression upon her face. She sits calmly, her beautiful head thrown back. Emil Grelieu rises quickly, and both he and his son start to pace the room in opposite directions._ PIERRE Do you see? EMIL GRELIEU Yes. PIERRE Do you see? EMIL GRELIEU Yes! Yes! JEANNE _As though indifferently._