Chasseurs--carried great bouquets already and kissed the petals in
homage to all the womanhood of France whose love they symbolized.
There were no tears in that crowd, though the wives and sweethearts
of many of the young men must have stood on the kerbstone to
watch them pass.

At those moments, in the sunshine, even the sting of parting was
forgotten in the enthusiasm and pride which rose up to those splendid
ranks of cavalry who were on their way to fight foi France and to
uphold the story of their old traditions. I could see no tears then but
my own, for I confess that suddenly to my eyes there came a mist of
tears and I was seized with an emotion that made me shudder icily in
the glare of the day. For beyond the pageantry of the cavalcade I saw
the fields of war, with many of those men and horses lying mangled
under the hot sun of August. I smelt the stench of blood, for I had
been in the muck and misery of war before and had seen the death
carts coming back from the battlefield and the convoys of wounded
crawling down the rutty roads--from Adrianople--with men, who had
been strong and fine, now shattered, twisted and made hideous by
pain. The flowers carried by those cavalry officers seemed to me like
funeral wreaths upon men who were doomed to die, and the women
who sprang out of the crowds with posies for their men were offering
the garlands of death.


12


In the streets of Paris in those first days of the war I saw many
scenes of farewell. All day long one saw them, so that at last one