The massive platoons of young-faced horsemen, whose solemn obstruction heavily hammered the stones of the street, were separated by horses loaded with bales of forage, by regimental wagons and baggage-carts, which rattled unendingly.

We formed a hedgerow along the twilight causeways and watched them all disappear.

Suddenly we cheered them.
The thrill that went through horses and men straightened them up and they went away bigger--as if they were coming back! "It's magnificent, how warlike we are in France!" said fevered Marie, squeezing my arm with all her might.
The departures, of individuals or groups, multiplied.

A sort of methodical and inevitable tree-blazing--conducted sometimes by the police--ransacked the population and thinned it from day to day around the women.
Increasing hurly-burly was everywhere--all the complicated measures so prudently foreseen and so interdependent; the new posters on top of the old ones, the requisitioning of animals and places, the committees and the allowances, the booming and momentous gales of motor-cars filled with officers and aristocratic nurses--so many lives turned inside out and habits cut in two.

But hope bedazzled all anxieties and stopped up the gaps for the moment.