Читать книгу Journal of Small Things - Helen Mackay - Страница 11

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This has been the day of waiting. Everywhere, every one waited.

In the Place aux Armes people stood and waited. The men waited to be told what to do. The women waited, each one of them staying close to her man. The children hung on to their fathers' hands.

In all the little towns along the road to Paris it was like that.

In the larger towns there was much movement of soldiers about in the streets. All the red képis were covered with blue. I wondered why.

The fields were empty. The work of the fields was left, flung down. The scythe lay in the sweep it had only half cut.

From Louvres already the men were gone. Only women and old people and children were left, in the length of the long street.

At the porte de La Chapelle we and a hay-cart going into Paris, and a small poor funeral coming out to the cemetery of St. Ouen, were all blocked together. The gendarmes were questioning the peasant of the hay-cart, who stood in his blue blouse at the head of a big sleepy white horse, and answered sulkily. One of the croquemorts told us that the order for general mobilization was posted up on the walls of Paris. I stared at his shiny top hat and black gloves that were too long in the fingers, and tried to realize what it meant.

The streets of our quarter are empty, and more strange than the streets and the boulevards we came through, where crowds were swaying up and down.

Madame Boudet and I were afraid to go across and read the words of the white oblong placard that is pasted up on the wall of the Palace.