dark, lowering sky, with the landscape whitened with hoar-frost, and the
glitter of the gold on the helmets and the hunting-horns passing beneath
the branches; while the galloping of the horses, the who-hoops of the
men, reminded me of the Black Huntsman in the German ballads. At dusk,
lines of carts came to gather up from the edge of the roads all the
wounded and dying game. It was like the evening after a battle.
[Picture: Taking home the day’s spoils]
* * * * *
[Picture: Depressed troops after the capitulation.]
_January_ 19_th_.
…They have fought all day under the walls of Paris. But the noise of the
mitrailleuses was not so distinct as on the 2nd of December. There was
something in the sound of that distant battle which gave me the
impression of lassitude and discouragement.
_January_ 30_th_.
…All is over. Paris has capitulated. The armistice is signed.
[Picture: Abandoned equipment]
* * * * *
LAST LEAFLETS.
[Picture: Robert finishing his Diary]
I end here my diary, in which I have tried to give the experiences of my
five months of solitude. To-day I returned to Draveil in the Doctor’s
carriage, but without hiding this time. The roads were full of peasants
returning home. Many are already at work again on the land. All faces
are sad, but no complaints are heard. Is it fatalism or resignation?
The Prussians still occupy the village, enforcing their triumph with cool
insolence. They, however, appear less brutal with the inhabitants. I
saw some walking about hand-in-hand with little children. It was like
the beginning of a return to their forsaken hearths, to their sedentary
lives, so long disturbed by this war . . . When I came home in the
evening, I saw on the doorstep of the keeper’s house, old Guillard’s
widow, dressed in deep mourning and hardly recognisable. Poor woman! her
husband dead and her home a wreck. Her misfortunes are complete. I
heard her weeping as she tried to put in order the remains of her
household goods.
[Picture: Papers] Silence reigns at the Hermitage. It is a clear night
and the air is balmy. Already the presence of spring is beginning to be
felt under the fast melting snow. The forest will soon bud forth, and I
shall watch to see the grass blades pushing aside the dead leaves. From
the distant quiet plains rises a misty vapour like the smoke of an
inhabited village; and if anything can impart consolation after a cruel
war, it is this repose of all Nature and mankind, this universal calm
which rests upon a shattered country—a country recruiting its strength by
sleep, forgetful of the lost harvest in preparing for that of the future!
[Picture: Commencing tilling the fields]
* * * * *
[Picture: Publisher’s Logo]