The journey, which generally takes two hours, lasted for ten. We were
packed like sardines. There were all sorts of things in our carriage,
from a baby's bath to a birdcage. Oh! how often we stopped between
the stations! (We heard afterwards that there had been an accident on
a side line, which accounted for the block and the impossibility of
getting on.) The passengers kept getting out and sitting on the banks,
and the children played about and amused themselves.
Trains full of soldiers, and even of wounded, were hung up like us on
parallel lines. All this confusion brought home to one the panic and
terror of this herd of human beings who, in order to escape from the
enemy, were rushing headlong into inconceivable troubles.
On the edge of the forest of Orleans we stopped for more than an hour.
By this time it was night, but the moon was shining. Another train had
also drawn up, and in the moonlight, the two trains looked like long
funeral processions.
The Master had not spoken since we left. With my face in my hands I was
crying, and there was complete silence in the compartment. All of a
sudden the most exquisite song rose on the tragic night. The voice came
from the other train which had been stopped like ours near the forest.
It was a man's voice, and he sang the serenade from "_La Damnation de
Faust_"--"_Vous qui faites l'endormie_," etc., and this song, rendered
with feeling by a musical and charming voice, lifted my spirits from
gloom and my soul from despair.
How I listened to this song, which bore from the train-load of wounded
the sweet message of a loving thought to some far-away sweetheart. In
the moonlight in the midst of all this human misery and distress it was
sublime.
Oh! love, thou art within the reach of all, and like the great sea
sheddest thy glamor even within the lowliest dwelling.
I shall long remember that man's song, and his warm and vibrant
southern voice.
These poetic impressions were soon obliterated at Orleans. Never shall
I forget the hell that station was.... It seemed impossible to walk
through that station without treading upon something or somebody.
Hundreds of human beings were stretched on seats and on the ground;
children were sleeping amongst bits of orange-peel and dirty pieces of
paper, their mothers were squatting down beside them. Stretcher-bearers
were going round with their stretchers.
All of us conceal from our neighbors our inmost thoughts, our secret
wounds, our hidden dreams, our cherished illusions, and our unknown
longings. And the part of us which we hide so jealously is the most
real, the most essential, the most enduring. That which we offer to
the outer world is only the husk and the mask!
Ah! what we mothers hide!
Yesterday at Lamballe we met a convoy of Prussian prisoners. They were
going, under a strong guard, to work on the railway. At the sight of
the gang my heart leapt within me. Standing up in the car I lost all
control of myself, and shouted: "Bandits, savages, assassins, down with
the Kaiser!" I was trembling with rage and emotion to think that here
I had before my eyes those brutes who had killed women and children,
girls and old men, for no reason at all--simply for the pleasure of
killing.
My friends were as much moved as I was, and even after the prisoners
had passed we kept on shouting, "_A bas l'Allemagne_," and "_Vive la
France!_"
They marched by, unmoved, with a contemptuous and disdainful expression
on their brutal faces. Only a very few of them looked as if they came
from a decent class--the rest were savages. Really, when one is near
them, one feels a regular surge of hate.