On the Edge of the War Zone | Page 3

even I am absolutely obsessed by
the miracle which has turned the invaders back from the walls of Paris.
I cannot get over the wonder of it. In the light of the sudden,
unexpected pause in that great push I have moments of believing that
almost anything can happen. I'll wager you know more about it on your
side of the great pond than we do here within hearing of the battle.
I don't even know whether it is true or not that Gallieni is out there. If it
is, that must mean that the army covering Paris has advanced, and that
Joffre has called out his reserves which have been entrenched all about
the seventy-two miles of steel that guards the capital. I wondered then,
and today--seven days later--I am wondering still.
It was useless to give these conjectures to Amélie. She was too deep in
her disappointment. She walked sadly beside me back to the garden, an
altogether different person from the one who had come racing across
the field in the sunshine. Once there, however, she braced up enough to
say:
"And only think, madame, a woman out there told me that the Germans
who were here last week were all chauffeurs at the Galeries Lafayette
and other big shops in Paris, and that they not only knew all the country
better than we do, they knew us all by name. One of them, who stopped
at her door to demand a drink, told her so himself, and called her by
name. He told her he had lived in Paris for years."
That was probably true. The delivery automobiles from all the big
shops in Paris came out here twice, and some of them three times a

week. It is no secret that Paris was full of Germans, and has been ever
since that beastly treaty of Frankfort, which would have expired next
year.
After Amélie had gone back to her work, I came into the library and sat
down at my desk to possess my soul with what patience I could, until
official news came. But writing was impossible.
Of course to a person who has known comparatively few restraints of
this sort, there is something queer in this kind of isolation. I am afraid I
cannot exactly explain it to you. As I could not work, I walked out on
to the chemin Madame. On one side I looked across the valley of the
Marne to the heights crowned by the bombarded towns. On the other I
looked across the valley of the Grande Morin, where, on the heights
behind the trees, I knew little towns like Coutevoult and Montbarbin
were evacuated. In the valley at the foot of the hill, Couilly and St.
Germain, Montry and Esbly were equally deserted. No smoke rose
above the red roofs. Not a soul was on the roads. Even the railway
station was closed, and the empty cars stood, locked, on the side- tracks.
It was strangely silent.
I don't know how many people there are at Voisins. I hear that there is
no one at Quincy. As for Huiry? Well, our population--everyone
accounted for before the mobilization--was twenty-nine. The hamlet
consists of only nine houses. Today we are six grown people and seven
children.
There is no doctor if one should be so silly as to fall ill. There are no
civil authorities to make out a death certificate if one had the bad taste
to die--and one can't die informally in France. If anyone should, so far
as I can see, he would have to walk to his grave, dig it, and lie down in
it himself, and that would be a scandal, and I am positive it would lead
to a procès. The French love lawsuits, you know. No respectable family
is ever without one.
However, there has not been a case of illness in our little community
since we were cut off from the rest of the world.
Somehow, at times, in the silence, I get a strange sensation of
unreality--the sort of intense feeling of its all being a dream. I wish I
didn't. I wonder if that is not Nature's narcotic for all experiences
outside those we are to expect from Life, which, in its normal course,
has tragedies enough.

Then again, sometimes, in the night, I have a sensation as if I were
getting a special view of a really magnificent spectacle to which the
rest of "my set" had not been invited--as if I were seeing it at a risk, but
determined to see it through.
I can imagine you, wrinkling your brows at me and telling me that that
frame of mind comes of my theatre-going habit. Well, it is not worth
while arguing it out. I can't. There is a