There was no _sonnerie_ from the portcullis, no salvo from parapet or bastion, no fanfare blared at midday in square or stony street. No bands of _voyous_ went yelling through boulevards, no seething crowds choked the cafés or formed a sinister maelstrom around embassies or government offices.
Down at the Gare de Chalons another crowd had gathered to watch the young men of Ausone depart. They came alone, or two by two, or in groups—sticks, bundles, suitcases, valises swinging—with serious, unruffled features intent upon the business of the long, long business day that was beginning for them at last.
Some were accompanied by parents, some by wives and children, some by sweethearts: many had said good-by at home and were walking to the station with brother or friend, saluting acquaintances en route.
But the mobilizing youths were undemonstrative, chary of gesture—shy, serious young fellows preoccupied with the business on hand, conscious that their term of service had equipped them for it—and in their bearing was that modesty and self-respect which discounts self-consciousness and self-assertion.
For there was no longer any excuse for France to be either noisy or dramatic when she went about her business—no reason for posturing, for epigrams, for attitudes, or for the loud laugh and the louder boast to bolster faith with mutual and riotous reassurance in the face of an unknown business venture concerning the conduct of which the entire nation was excited, ignorant, and unprepared.
The Republic had been both instructed and prepared for the matter of the business on hand. And was going quietly about it.
In Ausone itself there were few signs of war visible; the exodus of the young men, the crowd before the bulletins, and the throng at the station, and perhaps more mounted officers and gendarmes than usual riding faster than is customary in the peaceful streets of a provincial town.
But on the roads around the fortified hill dominating the rolling green landscape in the heart of which Ausone nestled, cavalry patrols were riding, infantry details tramped through the white dust, military wagons and motor vans passed under dragoon escort; bridges over the Récollette were guarded by line soldiers and gendarmes, while sappers and miners and engineers were busy at every bridge, culvert, and railway cut.