Jostled, he walked along the busy thoroughfare, a man far away, treading the paths of the spirit. In this mighty convulsion that threatened the earth, there was one spot which summoned him, with a call clear and insistent. His place was there, in Périgord, to share in its hopes and its fears, its mourning and its joy. He returned to the hotel for his bag and took the first train in the direction of Brantôme. What he would do when arrived, he had no definite notion. It was something beyond reason that drove him thither. Something irresistible; more irresistible than the force which had impelled him to Egypt. Then he had hesitated, weighed things for and against. Now, one moment had decided him. It never occurred to him to question. Through the burning south of France he sped. As yet only the shadow of war hung over the land; the awful Word had not yet gone forth. Swarthy men and women worked in the baking vineyards and gathered in the yellow harvest. But here and there on flashing glimpses of white road troops marched dustily and military waggons lumbered along. And in the narrow, wooden-seated third-class carriage on the slow and ever stopping train, the talk even of the humblest was of war. At every station some of the passengers left, some entered. There seemed to be a sudden concentration homewards. At every station were soldiers recalled from leave to their garrisons. These, during the journey, were questioned as authoritative functionaries. Yes, for sure, there would be war. Why they did not know, except that the _sales bêtes_ of Germans were, at last, going to invade France. Said one, “I saw an officer yesterday in our village—the son of Monsieur le Comte de Boirelles who has the big _château là-bas_—we have known each other from childhood—and he said, ‘_Hein, mon brave, ca y est!_’ And I said: ‘What, _mon lieutenant_?’ And he said, ‘_V’là le son, le son du canon_.’ Fight like a good son of Boirelles, or I’ll cut off your ears.’ And I replied, _quasiment comme ça_: ‘You will not have the opportunity, _mon lieutenant_, you being in the artillery and I in the infantry.’ And he laughed with good heart. ‘Anyhow,’ said he, ‘if you return to the village, when the war is over, without the military medal, and I am alive, I’ll make my mother do it, in the courtyard of the château, with her own scissors.’ I tell you this to prove to you that I know there is going to be war.” And the women, holding their blue bundles on their knees in the crowded compartment—for in democratic France demos is not allowed the luxury of luggage-racks—looked at the future with anxious eyes. What would become of them? The government would take their men. Their men would be killed or maimed. Even if the men returned safe and sound, in the meantime, how would they live? _Ah, mon Dieu! Cette rosse de guerre!_ They cursed the war as though it were a foul and conscious entity.