It Was The Season Of The Year, And They Were Swarming.
AUCTOR. So be it.
Then if you will hear nothing of what interests me,
I see no reason for setting down with minute care what interests you,
and I may leave out all mention of the Girl who could only speak
German, of the Arrest of the Criminal, and even of the House of
Marshal Turenne - - this last something quite exceptionally
entertaining. But do not let us continue thus, nor push things to an
open quarrel. You must imagine for yourself about six miles of road,
and then - then in the increasing heat, the dust rising in spite of the
morning rain, and the road most wearisome, I heard again the sound of
bugles and the sombre excitement of the drums.
It is a thought-provoking thing, this passing from one great garrison
to another all the way down the frontier. I had started from the busy
order of Toul; I had passed through the silence and peace of all that
Moselle country, the valley like a long garden, and I had come to the
guns and the tramp of Epinal. I had left Epinal and counted the miles
and miles of silence in the forests, I had crossed the great hills and
come down into quite another plain draining to another sea, and I
heard again all the clamour that goes with soldiery, and looking
backward then over my four days, one felt - one almost saw - the new
system of fortification, the vast entrenched camps each holding an
army, the ungarnished gaps between.
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