Montparnasse station—cold and grey on this dull August morning. Groups of people, each setting out with its escort, might be seen streaming in from all the neighbouring turnings towards the square which the last tooting trams were crossing. They formed but one swarm, scattered and renewed without ceasing. There was nothing like these huge quivering masses, the preoccupation of all Paris, magnificent in their emotion and courage, who succeeded each other at the Gare de L'Est. Poor women, young and old looking almost equally faded, were carrying old handkerchiefs containing the possessions of their husbands and sons,—working-men in broad belts. Beside them, fathers wearing decorations and beautifully dressed mothers and sisters surrounded young bourgeois dragging heavy kit-bags. All these people were holding back their tears and smiling, saying that they would see each other again! As for me, I was alone. I was leaving nothing behind me. So much the better; I was glad of it. I[Pg 73] was starting on the great adventure, with an entirely open mind, in the r?le of an on-looker.
The two staircases were barricaded. Only one entrance was open, reserved for soldiers carrying their railway warrants in their hands. I followed the stream. We climbed the slope. From the road below passers-by made us signs of encouragement. I noted the quick sprightly steps of most of my companions. Mine were rather slower but firm and decided nevertheless. I unconsciously adopted the gait of a man who means to see the thing through.
I should, I thought, see nearly all my contemporaries in the regiment turning up at this meeting-place. I rejoiced at the thought of spying out, on each one's forehead, the reflection of his private feelings.
The comrades of my twenty-first year! There is no age at which a life lived in common is responsible for forming more attachments than this one, but I was among those who had made the fewest friends during those ten months. I had had a room to myself in town, while many of them agreed to share with two or three others. I was considered a bore; a report which I had started, a state of affairs which I exploited, in order to escape endless fatigues. Beyond that I was neither liked nor disliked. They mistrusted my coldly mystifying disposition, they envied me the calm insolence with which I defied my non-commissioned officers. When the time came for separation, and the exchange of addresses, I did as the others did; without any illusions; nobody would bother to look me up, I felt sure. I was mistaken. Someone did come: Guillaumin.
He was a grotesquely ugly chap, with a great thick red nose, short-sighted eyes, and a hoarse voice. A[Pg 74] chatter-box, energetic and obliging, loved and chaffed by everyone. What should he do but get the idea into his head of keeping in touch with all those he had considered good fellows down there! And he had almost succeeded in doing so. He was the living index which one need only consult for information on the fate of all the old lot in our platoon. He dropped in to see me from time to time, on his way from the office where he vegetated as a clerk. We dined together on those evenings, and for him, I deserted Laquarrière, who, having caught sight of him one day, did not spare me his sarcasms on my grotesque "regimental friend."
I arrived in the station. It was swarming with reservists leaving to rejoin their regiment. Not many faces that I recognised. One already felt lost, and groups were formed instinctively.
The first one I shook hands with was Laraque, the handsome Laraque, whose rosy shaven face and marked features, prepossessing and imperious at the same time, gave him simultaneously the air of a Roman Emperor or of a ballad prince.
"Well, there we are!" he said. "Killing, what?"
"Killing, oh rather. Got your ticket?"
"What do you imagine! I think they might give us a free trip!"
His tone showed me where I was. I could see that it was going to be the proper thing to take everything as a joke. Not to show one's feelings in any way.... Good! We should see how long that would last! I should have my revenge as an on-looker.
Faron joined us, the son of the professor at the Sorbonne. He himself was a barrister, thin, energetic,[Pg 75] and impenetrable. He buried himself in his newspapers. Then Holveck small and witty. He had just started a bank, with a branch in New York. Ladmiraut, an old Normalien with a puffy face and thick, hanging lips, an erudite pedant and a simple soul who used to be the picked target for all the practical jokes. Big Denais, the finished type of the don't-care-a-blow-for-any-one shover. Fortin, who had taken a degree in history, a lecturer and public speaker, not long returned from Germany, ............