I provided for myself accordingly without waiting for the official call. In consequence I was able to devote my last free hours to some of my less experienced neighbors. Among these, two poor fellows interested me particularly. They were brothers, one of them recently married, who, by uniting their savings, had just opened a shop not far from my home. They had watched with dismay the coming of the tempest, and questioned me incessantly, hoping to find in my answers some words of reassurance. I was able to give only such answers as increased their fears, and to add advice which they would not heed. “Imitate me,” I said to them; “the war is inevitable. Buy some heavy shoes and thick socks. Provide yourselves with needles and thread. One always needs them, and too often one hasn’t them when the need is greatest,” etc. They wouldn’t listen. They continued to worry and do nothing, refusing to the end to accept the terrible reality, closing their eyes to the spectre as if they had a premonition that they were destined to be crushed in the torment and both killed; which, as I have since learned, was their fate within the first month of the war. In the meantime I had to write consoling letters to my wife, abandoned at the seaside, amid a populace shocked and bewildered by the thunderbolt, and lacking definite news to satisfy the anxious need which saddened each individual. But I was a soldier. I had to rejoin my command, and I had only enough time to pay a farewell visit to the home of my parents, where my brothers, ready like myself, awaited me with their wives and children. Such an unforgettable repast. The paternal table surrounded by the group of sons and grandchildren, each still forcing himself to smile to hearten the others, each in the bottom of his heart wondering anxiously what the morrow would unfold. Several of those who on this final evening partook of the food prepared by their mother, or touched their glasses and drank “A la France,” “A la Victoire,” will never return. They have fallen on the field of honor, battling the odious invader, breasting his blows and giving their lives that their sons may remain French and free. No one knew who would fall, who would be alive a year, even a month later, but one would have looked in vain for a quiver in any eye or a tremor in any voice. All were French. All accepted their duty, however it might present itself; each in his rank, in his assigned place; to do simply, without discussion, without hesitation, whatever the threatened country might demand of its children. We had the courage to laugh, at this last dinner. We heard our father recall the memories of the other war, that of 1870, in which he had served as a volunteer, and then we separated with words of au revoir and not good-by on our lips.