It was there, at the café table, in the midst of the notables of the little town, that he learned many things either undreamed of or uncared for during his narrow life at Margett’s Universal College. It startled him to find himself in the company of men passionately patriotic. Hitherto, as an Englishman living remote from Continental thought, he had taken patriotism for granted; his interest in politics had been mild and parochial; he had adopted a vague conservative outlook due, most likely, to antipathy to his democratic Swiss relatives, who sent eight pounds to the relief of his impoverished mother, and to a nervous shrinking from democracy in general as represented by his pupils. But in this backwater of the world he encountered a political spirit intensely alive. Vital principles formed the subject of easy, yet stern discussion. Beneath the calm of peaceful commerce and agriculture he felt the pulse of France throbbing in fierce determination to maintain her national existence. Every man had been a soldier; some of the elders had fought in 1870, and those who had grown up sons were the fathers of soldiers. Martin realised that whereas in England, in time of peace, the private soldier was tolerated as a picturesque, good-natured, harum-scarum sort of fellow, the _picu-piou_ in France was an object of universal affection. The army was woven into the whole web of French life; it permeated the whole of French thought; it coloured the whole of French sentiment. It was not a machine of blood and iron, as in Germany, but the soul sacrifice of a nation. “_Vive la France!_” meant “_Vive l’armée!_” And that mere expression “_Vive la France!_”—how often had he heard it during his short sojourn in the country. He cudgelled his brains to remember when he had heard a corresponding cry in England. It seemed to him that there was none. There was no need for one. England would live as long as the sea girded her shores and Britannia ruled the waves. We need not trouble our English heads any further. But in France conditions are different. From the Vosges to the Bay of Biscay, from Calais to the Mediterranean, every stroke on a Krupp anvil reverberated through France. “_Ça vient_—when no one knows,” said the comfortable citizens, “but it is coming sooner or later, and then we shed the last drop of our blood. We are prepared. We have learned our lesson. There will never be another Sedan.” They said it soberly, like men whose eyes were set on an implacable foe. And Martin knew that through the length and breadth of the land comfortable citizens held the same sober and stern discourse. Every inch of French soil was dear to these men, and to guard it they would shed the last drop of their blood. Corinna informed of these conversations said lightly: “You haven’t lived among them as long as I have. It’s just their Gallic way of talking.”