We met Elsa at the _Gare de l’Est_ in Paris the evening after our
arrival. Brand’s nervous anxiety had increased as the hour drew near,
and he smoked cigarette after cigarette, while he paced up and down the
_salle d’attente_ as far as he could for the crowds which surged there.
Once he spoke to me about his apprehensions.
“I hope to God this will work out all right.... I’m only thinking of
her happiness.”
Another time he said:
“This French crowd would tear her to pieces if they knew she was
German.”
While we were waiting we met a friend of old times. I was first to
recognise Pierre Nesle, who had been attached to us as interpreter and
_liaison_ officer. He was in civil clothes and was wearing a bowler
hat and a light overcoat, so that his transformation was astonishing.
I touched him on the arm as he made his way quickly through the crowd,
and he turned sharply and stared at me as though he could not place me
at all. Then a look of recognition leapt into his eyes and he grasped
both my hands, delightedly. He was still thin and pale, but some of his
old melancholy had gone out of his eyes and in its place there was an
eager, purposeful look.
“Here’s Brand,” I said. “He’ll be glad to see you again.”
“_Quelle chance!_” exclaimed Pierre, and he made a dash for his friend
and before Brand could remonstrate kissed him on both cheeks. They
had been good comrades, and after the rescue of Marthe from the mob
in Lille it was to Brand that Pierre Nesle had opened his heart and
revealed his agony. He could not stay long with us in the station as he
was going to some political meeting, and perhaps it was well, because
Brand was naturally anxious to escape from him before Elsa came.
“I am working hard--speaking, writing, organising--on behalf of
the _Ligue des Tranchées_,” said Pierre. “You must come and see me
at my office. It’s the headquarters of the new movement in France.
Anti-militarist, to fulfil the ideals of the men who fought to end war.”
“You’re going to fight against heavy odds,” said Brand. “Clémenceau
won’t love you, nor those who like his Peace.”
Pierre laughed and used an old watchword of the war.
“_Nous les aurons!_ Those old dead-heads belong to the past. Peace has
still to be made by the men who fought for a new world.”
He gave us his address, pledged us to call on him, and slipped into the
vortex of the crowd.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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