The Winner Loses: A Picture of Occupied France

I

WE were spending the afternoon with our friends, Madame Pierlot and the d’Aiguys, in September ‘39 when Franee declared war on Germany — England had done it first. They all were upset but hopeful, but I was terribly frightened; I had been so sure there was not going to be war and here it was, it was war, and I made quite a scene. I said, ‘They shouldn’t! They shouldn’t!’ and they were very sweet, and I apologized and said I was sorry but it was awful, and they comforted me—they, the French, who had so much at stake, and I had nothing at stake comparatively.

Well, that was a Sunday.

And then there was another Sunday and we were at. Béon again that Sunday, and Russia came into the war and Poland was smashed, and I did not care about Poland, but it did frighten me about France — oh dear, that was another Sunday.

And then we settled down to a really wonderful winter.

We did not know that we were going to stay all winter. There is no way of heating this stone house except by open fires, and we are in the mountains, there is a great deal of snow, and it is cold; but gradually we stayed. We had some coal, enough for the kitchen stove, and one grate fire that we more or less kept burning day and night, and there is always plenty of wood here as we are in wooded mountains, so gradually we stayed the winter. The only break was a forty-eight-hour run to Paris to get our winter clothing and arrange our affairs and then we were back for the winter.

Those few hours in Paris made us realize that the country is a better place in war than a city. They grow the things to eat right where you are, so there is no privation, as taking it away is difficult, particularly in the mountains, so there was plenty of meat and potatoes and bread and honey and we had some sugar and we even had all the oranges and lemons we needed and dates; a little short in gasoline for the car, but we learned to do what we wanted with that little, so we settled down to a comfortable and pleasantly exciting winter.

I had not spent a winter in the country, in the real country, since my childhood in California and I did enjoy it; there was snow, and moonlight, and I had to saw wood. There was plenty of wood to be had, but no men to saw it; and every day Basket II, our new poodle, and I took long walks. We took them by day and we took them in the evening, and as I used to wander around the country in the dark — because of course we had the blackout and there was no light anywhere, and the soldiers at the front were indulging in a kind of red Indian warfare all that winter — I used to wonder how anybody could get near without being seen, because I did get to be able to see every bit of the road and the fields beside them, no matter how dark it was.

There were a number of people all around spending the winter unexpectedly in the country, so we had plenty of society and we talked about the war, but not too much, and we had hired a radio wireless and we listened to it, but not too much, and the winter was all too soon over.

I had plenty of detective and adventure stories to read, Aix and Chambéry had them left over, and I bought a quantity every week, and there was an English family living near Yenne and they had books too, and we supplied each other.

One of the books they had I called the Bible; it was an astrological book called The Last Year of War, written by one Leonardo Blake. I burnt my copy the day of the signing of the armistice, but it certainly had been an enormous comfort to us all in between.

And so gradually spring came, a nice early spring, and all the men in the village had leave for agriculture and they all came home for a month, and nobody was very uneasy and nobody talked about the war, but nobody seemed to think that anything was going to happen. We all dug in our gardens and in the fields all day and every day, and March and April wore away.

There were slight political disturbances and a little wave of uneasiness, and Paul Reynaud, as the village said, began to say that there were not to be any more Sundays. The post-office clerks were the first to have their Sundays taken away. The village said it as a joke, ‘Paul Reynaud says that there are not to be any more Sundays.’ As country people work Sundays anyway when there is work, they said it as a joke to the children and the young boys, ‘Paul Reynaud says that there are not to be any Sundays any more.’ By that time all the men who had had an agricultural leave were gone again, and April was nearly over.

The book of astrological predictions had predicted all these things, so we were all very well satisfied.

Beside these astrological predictions there were others, and the ones they talked about most in the country were the predictions of the curé d’Ars. Ars is in this department of the Ain, and the curé, who died about eighty years ago, became a saint; and he had predicted that this year there would be a war and the women would have to sow the grain alone, but that the war would be over in time for the men to get in the harvest ; and so when Alice Toklas sometimes worried about how hot it would be all summer with the shutters closed all the evening I said, ‘Do not worry, the war will be over before then; they cannot all be wrong.’

So the month of March and April went on. We dug in the garden, we had a lot of soldiers in Belley, the 13th Chasseurs and the Foreign Legion being fitted out for Norway; and then Sammy Stewart sent us an American Mixmaster at Easter and that helped make the cakes which were being made then for the soldiers and everybody, and so the time went on. Then it was more troublesome, the government changed, — the book of prophecy said it would, so that was all right, — and the soldiers left for Norway; and then our servant and friend Madame Roux had her only son, who was a soldier, of course, dying of meningitis at Annecy, and we forgot everything for two weeks in her trouble and then we woke up to there being a certain uneasiness.

The book of prophecy said that the month of May was the beginning of the end of the Nazis, and it gave the dates. They were all Tuesdays — well, anyway they were mostly Tuesdays — and they were going to be bad days for the Nazis, and I read the book every night in bed and everybody telephoned to ask what the book said and what the dates were, and the month began.

The dates the book gave were absolutely the dates the things happened.

The first was the German attack on the new moon, the seventh, and that was a Tuesday.

Tuesdays had begun.

Everybody was quiet; one of the farmers’ wives —the richest of the farmers and our town councilor — was the only one who said anything. She always said, ‘Its avancent toujours, ces coquinslà.’ ‘The rascals are always coming on,’ she said.

There was nothing else to say and nobody said it, and then the Germans took Sedan.

That gave us all so bad a turn that nobody said anything; they just said how do you do, and talked about the weather, and that was all — there was nothing to say.

I had been in Paris as a child of five at school, and that was only ten years after the Franco-Prussian War and the debacle which began with Sedan, and when we children swung on the chains around the Arc de Triomphe we were told that the chains were there so that no one could pass under it because the Germans had, and so the name Sedan was as terrible to me as it was to all the people around us and nobody said anything. The French are very conversational and they are always polite, but when there is really nothing to say they do not say anything. And there was nothing to say.

The next thing was that General Weygand was appointed the head of the army and he said if they could hold out a month it would be all right. Nobody said anything. Nobody mentioned Gamelin’s name — nobody.

I once said to a farmer that Gamelin’s nose was too short to make a good general, in France you have to have a real nose, and he laughed; there was no secrecy about anything, but there was nothing to say.

We had the habit of going to Chambéry to do our shopping once a week; we always went on Tuesdays because that suited best in every way, and so it was Tuesday, and nobody was very cheerful.

We had a drink in a café, Vichy for me and pineapple juice for Alice Toklas, and we heard the radio going. ‘What’s the news?’ we asked mechanically. ‘Amiens has fallen,’ said the girl.

‘Let’s not believe it,’ I said; ‘you know they never hear it straight.’ So we went to the news bulletin, and there it was not written up, and we said to the girl in charge, ‘You know, they are putting out false news in the town; they told us Amiens was taken.’ ‘No,’ she said, ‘but I will go and ask.’ She came back; she said, ‘Yes, it is true.’

We did not continue shopping, we just hurried home.

And then began the series of Tuesdays in which Paul Reynaud in a tragic voice told that he had something grave to announce.

That was that Tuesday.

And the next Tuesday was the treason of the Belgian king.

And he always announced it the same way, and always in the same voice.

I have never listened to the radio since.

It was so awful that it became funny.

Well, not funny, but they did all want to know if next Tuesday Paul Reynaud would have something grave to announce.

And he did.

‘Oh dear, what a month of May!’ I can just hear Paul Reynaud’s voice saying that.

Madame Pierlot’s little granddaughter said not to worry, it was the month of the Virgin, and nothing begun in the month of the Virgin could end badly; and the book of prophecy had predicted every date, but exactly. I used to read it every night; there was no mistake, but he said each one of these days was a step on in the destruction of the Third Reich, and here we were. I still believed, but here we were, one Tuesday after another; the dates were right, but oh dear!

Of course, as they were steadily advancing, the question of parachutists and bombing became more active. We had all gotten careless about lights, and wandering about, but now we were strict about lights, and we stayed at home.

II

I had begun the beginning of May to write a book for children, a book of alphabets with stories for each letter, and a book of birthdays, — each story had to have a birthday in it, — and I did get so that I could not think about the war but just about the stories I was making up for this book. I would walk in the daytime and make up stories, and I walked up and down on the terrace in the evening and made up stories, and I went to sleep making up stories, and I pretty well did succeed in keeping my mind off the war except for the three times a day when there was the French communiqué, and that always gave me a sinking feeling in my stomach, and though I slept well every morning I woke up with that funny feeling in my stomach.

The farmers who were left were formed into a guard to wander about at night with their shotguns to shoot parachutists if they came. Our local policeman, the policeman of Belley, lives in Bilignin, and he had an up-to-date antiparachutist’s gun. He did not look very martial and I said to him, ‘What are you going to do with it?’ and he said, ‘I — I am not afraid.’ Well, Frenchmen are never afraid, but they do like peace and their regular daily life. So now nobody talked about the war; there was nothing to say about that. They talked about parachutists and Italy and that was natural enough — we are right here in a corner made by Italy and Switzerland.

The women did say, ‘They are advancing all the time, the rascals,’ but the men said nothing. They were not even sad; they just said nothing.

And so that month was almost over; and then one day, it was a Sunday, I was out walking with Basket just before lunch, and as I came up the hill Emil Rossct and the very lively servant they had, who had been with them for twenty-five years and had had a decoration and reward by the government for faithful service on a farm, and who in spite of all that is very young and lively, were standing pointing and said, ‘Mademoiselle! Mademoiselle! Did you see them?’ ‘What?’ I said. ‘The airplanes — the enemy airplanes! There they go, just behind the cloud!’

Well, I just did not see them; they had gone behind the clouds.

There were eight, they told me, and were flying very feebly.

We have a range of hills right in front of the terrace; on the other side of these hills is the Rhone, and that is where they had come from.

Of course we were all really excited; enemy airplanes in a city are depressing, but in the open country, with wooded hills all around, they are exciting.

We have several very religious families in Bilignin and one with four girls and a boy, and they all go into Belley to Mass, and Madame Tavel said to me, ‘I knew it,’—it was her day to stay home with the animals, — ‘I knew it: they always come on Sunday and burn the church.’ She had been a young girl in French Lorraine in the last war and met her husband there, who had been a prisoner.

‘But,’ she said, ‘of course we have to go to Mass just the same.’

It was she who later on said to her little girl, who was to go out into the fields with the cows and who was crying, Madame Tavel said, ‘Yes, my little one, you are right to cry. Weep. But, little one, the cows have to go, and you with them all the same. Tu as raison, pleures, ma petite.’

We went over to Culoz, which is about twelve kilometres away, to see our friends and to hear the news. Culoz is the big railroad station in this part of the world where trains are made up for various directions, and there they had dropped bombs. All the veterans of Culoz turned out to see the bombs drop and they were disappointed in them; they found them to be bombs of decidedly deuxième catégorie, very secondrate indeed.

It was the only time we had bombs really anywhere near us, and one of the German airplanes was brought down near a friend’s house not far away and a country boy seventeen years old brought in the aviators, and it was a pleasant interlude, and we could all talk again and we had something to talk about and the veterans all were very pleased for the first time in this war; one of our friends remarked that it really was a fête pour les anciens combattants.

The war was coming nearer. The mayor of Belley came to Bilignin to tell the mothers that two of their sons were killed.

It was sad; they were each one the only sons of widows who had lost their husbands in the last war, and they were the only ones, now the war is over we know, who were killed anywhere in this countryside.

They were both hard-working quiet fellows twenty-six years old, and had gone to school together and worked together and one of them had just changed his company so as to be near the other, and now one bomb at the front had killed them both.

That month was over and June was commencing.

I had finished the child’s book and had settled down to cutting the box hedges. We have what they call a jardin de curé, with lots of box hedges and little paths and one tall box pillar, and I found that cutting box hedges was almost as soothing as sawing wood. I walked a great deal and I cut box hedges, and every night I read the book of prophecy and went promptly to sleep.

And none of us talked about the war because there was nothing to say.

The book of prophecy once more gave the significant days for June and they were absolutely the days that the crucial events happened, only they were not the defeat of Germany but the downfall of France.

It made me feel very Shakespearean

— the witches’ prophecy in Macbeth about the woods marching and Julius Cæsar and the Ides of March; the twentieth century was just like that and like nothing else.

And then Italy came into the war and then I was scared, completely scared, and my stomach felt very weak, because

— well, here we were right in everybody’s path; any enemy that wanted to go anywhere might easily come here. I was frightened; I woke up completely upset. And I said to Alice Toklas, ‘ Let’s go away.’ We went into Belley first and there there were quantities of cars passing, people getting away from Besangon, both of us and all the Belleysiens standing and looking on; and I went to the garage to have my car put in order and there were quantities of cars getting ready to leave, and we had our papers prepared to go to Bordeaux and we telephoned to the American consul in Lyon and he said, ‘I’ll fix up your passports. Do not hesitate — leave.’

And then we began to tell Madame Roux that we could not take Basket with us and she would have to take care of him, but not to sacrifice herself to him; and she was all upset and she said she wished we were away in safety but that we would not leave, and she said the village was upset and so were we, and we went to bed intending to leave the next morning.

I read the book of predictions and went to sleep.

The next morning I said, ‘Well, instead of deciding let us go to see the préfet at Bourg and the American consul at Lyon.’

We went; it was a lovely day, the drive from Bourg to Lyon was heavenly. They all said, ‘Leave,’ and I said to Alice Toklas, ‘Well, I don’t know — it would be awfully uncomfortable and I am fussy about my food. Let’s not leave.’ So we came back, and the village was happy and we were happy and that was all right, and I said I would not hear any more news — Alice Toklas could listen to the wireless, but as for me I was going to cut box hedges and forget the war.

Well, two days after when I woke up, Alice Toklas said sooner or later we would have to go.

I did not have much enthusiasm for leaving and we had not had our passports visaed for Spain, and the American consul had told us we could, so I said, ‘Let’s compromise and go to Lyon again.’

The car’s tire was down and Madame Roux said, ‘You see, even the car does not want to leave.’

Just then Balthus and his wife came along; they had come down from Paris, sleeping two days in their little car, and they were going to their summer home in Savoy and after, if necessary, to Switzerland, Madame Balthus being Swiss. Well, anyway we went to Lyon.

On the way back we were stopped every few minutes by the military; they were preparing to blow up bridges and were placing anti-aircraft guns and it all seemed very near and less than ever did I want to go on the road.

And at the same time when Alice Toklas would say about some place on the road, ‘Look, what a lovely house that is!’ I said, ‘I do not want to look at it — it is all going to be destroyed.’

So just before we got to Belley, at a little village near a little lake, there were Doctor and Madame Chaboux.

‘What,’ said we, stopping, ‘are you doing here?’

‘We are paying for our year’s fishing rights,’ they said; ‘and you?’ said they. ‘Well,’ said we, ‘we are trying to make up our minds what to do, go or stay.’

‘Now,’ said I, ‘tell me, Doctor Chaboux, what shall I do ? ‘

‘Well, we stay,’ said they. ‘Yes,’ said I, ‘but a doctor is like a soldier — he has to stay.’

‘Yes,’ said they.

‘But now how about us? Should we or should we not?’

‘Well,’ said Doctor Chaboux, reflecting, ‘I can’t guarantee you anything, but my advice is stay. I had friends,’ he said, ‘who in the last war stayed in their homes all through the German occupation, and they saved their homes and those who left lost theirs. No,’ he said, ‘I think unless your house is actually destroyed by a bombardment, I always think the best thing to do is to stay.’ He went on, ‘Everybody knows you here; everybody likes you; we all would help you in every way. Why risk yourself among strangers?’

‘Thank you,’ we said, ‘that is all we need. We stay.’

So back we came and we unpacked our spare gasoline and our bags and we said to Madame Roux, ‘Here we are and here we stay.’

And I went out for a walk and I said to one of the farmers, ‘We are staying.’

‘Vous faites bien,’ he said, ‘mademoiselle. We all said, “Why should these ladies leave? In this quiet corner they are as safe as anywhere,” and we have cows and milk and chickens and flour and we can all live and we know you will help us out in any way you can and we will do the same for you. Here in this little corner we are en famille, and if you left, to go where? — aller, où?’

And they all said to me, ’Aller, où?’ and I said, ‘You are right — aller, où?'

We stayed, and dear me, I would have hated to have left.

III

The Kiddie has just written me a letter from America and he says in it, ‘We have been wondering what the end of war in France will mean for you, whether you could endure staying there or the exact opposite, whether you could endure not staying there.’

So I said to Alice Toklas, ‘I am cutting the hedges, even the very tall one on a ladder, and I am not reading the prediction book any more, and I am walking and I am not knowing what the news is,’ and Alice Toklas began making raspberry jam, — it was a wonderful raspberry year, — and the long slow days passed away.

They did not really pass.

One day I said to her, ‘Ten days ago when we were in Lyon,’ and she said, ‘Nonsense, it was three days ago.’ Well, it seemed like ten, but the days all the same did pass one day at a time.

In the afternoons Basket and I always walked.

We walked in the country roads and every now and then a little girl would appear through the bushes; she was sitting with the cows and knitting, but when she heard us she came to the road. They are often blue-eyed, the little girls, as we are in the hills, and hills seem to make people’s eyes blue, and she would say, ‘How do you do, Mademoiselle? Vow êtes en promenade — you are out for a walk,’ and I would say, ‘Yes, it is a nice day,’ and she would say, ‘Yes,’ and I would say, ‘And you are alone,’ and she would say, ‘Yes, my mother was here, but she went home — perhaps she will come again,’ and then she would say, ‘ And have you heard the airplanes?’ and I would say, ‘No, have you?’ and she would say, ‘Oh yes,’ and I would say, ‘Were they German or French?’ and she would say, ‘I do not know,’ and I would say ‘Perhaps they are French,’ and she would say, ‘Perhaps,’ and then I would say good-bye and she would say good-bye and disappear back through the bushes into the field, and it was always the same conversation and it was a comfort to us both, to each little girl and to me.

We went to Belley to buy food and the rest of the time I cut box hedges and Alice Toklas went on making raspberry jam; we had lots of raspberries; and as I did not listen to any news any more it was heavy but peaceful.

Then came the next Sunday.

I went out for a walk in the morning and stopped to talk with one of the farmers, Monsieur Tavel. ‘Well,’ said he, ‘the battle of Lyon has commenced.’ ‘What?’ said I. ‘Are they at Lyon?’ From then on they were always spoken of as ‘they’; they did not have any other name. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘but it is all right; there are lots of soldiers there and it is all right.’ ‘But why is it all right?’ I said. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘because there is an old prophecy which says that the day will come when France will be betrayed by a Catholic king, not her own king but another king — that another king will be crazy, and that all the Paris region will be occupied by the enemy and, in front of Lyon, France will be saved by a very old man on a white horse.

‘Well,’ he said, ‘the king of the Belgians was a Catholic king and he betrayed us, the king of Italy has gone mad, and the Maréchal Pétain is a very old man and he always rides a white horse. So it is all right,’ said Monsieur Tavel.

Well, Lyon was awfully near and if there was going to be a great battle — well, anyway it was a bright sunny day, and I came back and I was tired and so I took out my deck chair and sat in the sun on the terrace and I went sound asleep. Then there was a half-pasttwelve communiqué and I woke up just to hear that the Maréchal Pétain had asked for an armistice.

Well, then he had saved France and everything was over. But it wasn’t, not at all — it was just beginning for us.

The village did not know what to say and nobody said anything; they just sighed; it was all very quiet.

We thought we could keep the shutters open and light the light, but they said no, not yet, the armistice was not signed and they, the Germans, might be anywhere.

The boys between sixteen and twenty — we have five of them in the village — were frightened lest they should be taken into the German army; they went to Belley to try to enlist in the French army, but naturally that could not be done. They came back with tears in their eyes and nervous. The peasants could not work — nobody did anything for a day or two. And then news commenced again; the man who bought the milk of Bilignin had met somebody who had seen the Germans and they had been quite kind — had given them gasoline for their car. They had been stuck somewhere without gasoline because, as the Germans advanced, the order had come that the gasoline should be poured away. Some did it and some did not. Belley is very law-abiding and so all the people who sold gasoline did.

The man who had the milk route which included Bilignin told them he would not come for the milk any more, nor would he pay them, but they could have three of his pigs. They had no way of getting them, so they asked me and I supplied the means of locomotion, and we brought back three pigs and somebody from Belley came out and butchered them and they gave us a beautiful big roast of pork, and with that and a ham we had bought and what there was to eat in the village we were very well fixed.

Everybody was getting more and more nervous and on Tuesday we went in to Belley; there was no armistice yet, but we thought we might get some soap and other things we needed.

We were in the biggest store in Belley, a sort of a bazaar, when all of a sudden the proprietor called out, ‘Go to the back of the shop!’ Well, naturally we didn’t, and we heard a rumbling noise and there two enemy machine-gun tanks came rushing through the street, with the German cross painted on them.

Oh my, it did make us feel most uncommonly queer. ‘Let’s go home,’ we said, and we did not do any more shopping; we went back to Bilignin.

And there we waited.

The boys between seventeen and twenty went up into the hills; they were badly frightened and excited. Their parents did not say anything. They had each taken with them their bicycles and a large loaf of bread. Naturally that did not last long and in two days they were back again. One of them, a boy named Roger, who was working for a farmer, was so frightened he ate nothing for three days and turned green with fright. He had two brothers in the French army — that was all right, but to be a German soldier! We all tried to cheer him up, but he sat in the corner and couldn’t move.

The only news we had about Belley or about anything, because the electricity and the post office were cut off, was by way of the policeman of Belley, who lives in Bilignin. He had to go back to sleep in Belley, but he always managed to get out once during the day to see his mother and give us the news — yes, the Germans were there in Belley; yes, so far they had behaved very correctly; no, nobody knew anything about the armistice.

I remember the last newspaper the postman brought to us. I went out and said, ‘It is nice to see you.’ ‘I wish,’ said he, ‘ that I could bring you better news, and I do not think I will come again,’ and he did not, not for more than three weeks.

Basket and I had begun to walk again, the cows and the children began to go out again, and then we began to hear cannon.

Every day we heard the cannon; it seemed to be all around us, which, as it turned out, it was and in some strange way we all cheered up at the sound of the cannonade.

We all began to talk about hearing the cannon, we all began to try to locate the direction of the cannon; some of the anciens combattants thought it came from the Alps, others thought it came from right near by, and then one evening I smelt the brimstone, and the color of the earth in the setting sun was a very strange yellow green and there were clouds, strange clouds, the kind of clouds I had never seen before, thick yellowgreen clouds rolling past the hills, and it reminded me of pictures of the Civil War, the battle of Lookout Mountain and that kind of thing — it looked like it and it smelled like it, and in a strange way it was comforting.

The policeman in his daily visit home told us that it was cannon and that it was all around us; the French had blown up the bridges of the Rhone all around us, some only about four kilometres away, and in all the places we knew so well there were machine guns and cannon and fighting and quantities of Germans; armored cars were going through Belley, and in all the villages around there were Germans and some motorcycle Germans came through our village.

And then came another bad Sunday; some of the children went in to Mass and came back with an exciting story that everybody that had any gasoline in their possession was going to be shot. Well, I had some extra gasoline besides what was in my car and I did not want to be shot. So, very nervous, I rushed off to the farmer, our neighbor, who is one of the municipal councilors of Belley, and asked what I should do. ‘Do nothing,’ he said; ‘unless they put up a notice here in Bilignin you do not need to do anything. Besides,’ said he, ‘I am going to Belley to find out all about it.’ And he came back and told us that what had happened was that Belley had gotten rid of all its gasoline and a German company had come along and they had had an accident and lost their gasoline tank, and they had asked at a garage for gasoline. Monsieur Barlet, our very gentle garage keeper, had said that he had none, and the Germans had not believed him and said they would shoot him if he did not produce it, and the mayor, who is also a gentle soul, but efficient, said he would put up a notice and have the town crier announce what was happening, and everybody who had any gasoline would bring it, and everybody in Belley did, and very soon the Germans had more than they needed and everybody went home with their gasoline and Monsieur Barlet was not shot. But he was and is our local hero, and he was quite pale for some days after and we all thanked him for not being shot, and he always carries around in his pocketbook the order that was posted that saved him from being shot.

That was absolutely the only unpleasant incident that happened in Belley, and that was on the Sunday when the Germans were very nervous; they were held up at the Rhone, and as the Rhone makes many bends, and the Chasseurs Alpins were fighting hard there, they thought they were caught in a trap.

IV

Well, then came Tuesday and Wednesday, and the rain poured and poured and the notice of the signing of the armistice was signed by the mayor of Belley and the German Colonel in command there, and posted up in Bilginin. I will never forget that day. It was about noon, and Basket and I went out for a walk and there in the pouring rain sadly were the five young boys of Bilignin leaning on their sticks with which they lead their oxen; they were in the middle of the road and desperate.

Nobody else was around except one farmer’s wife and she said to me, ‘Well, I suppose we will go on working even if we are no longer masters in our own home.’

The next day was a little better. It had stopped raining and the terms of the armistice were broadcast; we once more had electricity and we knew our little corner was not going to be occupied territory, neither the Bugey nor Lyon, and we gave a sigh of relief. Monsieur Premilieu said to me, ‘Of course we are going to have bad days, many bad days, but it is better to bear them indirectly than directly.’ The boys cheered up and began to eat, and we went in to Belley to shop and, well, in short to begin to move about; and besides — happy moment — we could leave our lights burning at night and the windows and the shutters open.

Even now, a good month after it is finished, every night when I go out walking and see all the lights shining I know the difference, and I cannot help feeling sorry, particularly for the English, but even a little for the Germans who are there in the dark and afraid of bombardment.

Cannonading is not agreeable, but it is bearable, but bombing from above, and not very far above, is mighty unpleasant.

The soldiers and civilians are all agreed about that.

So we went in to Belley and there they were.

All the time they were here they were not spoken of as anything except they, eux.

It was impossible, but there they were, and we were seeing them.

Belley is a town of about five thousand inhabitants, a small town but important, as it is the capital of a rich country, has a hospital, a seminary, many schools, a county court, a sous-préfecture, and a garrison. There are also a good many convents, and so, although the population is not large, it has a number of very large buildings and feels like a small capital. It was also just about the centre of all the recent fighting, and so the Germans had made it the headquarters for all the troops in this part of the country.

So when we went in to Belley — we are about a mile out of Belley, on a small country road — we saw them, quantities of soldiers in gray uniforms, trucks, motorcycles, armored cars. We could not believe our eyes, but there they were.

It was not real, but there they were; it looked like photographs in a magazine, but there they were.

I sat in the car and waited while Alice Toklas shopped and then she sat in the car and waited while I went to see Madame Chaboux and shopped. We always stayed, one of us, in the car because of the dogs and the car — even though the Germans were very polite and very correct. That is what everybody was saying. “They are correct.’

It was strange sitting there watching the people up and down on the main street of Belley, like all country towns; there are always a good many people going up and down on the main street of a country town, and now added to it were these familiar and unfamiliar German soldiers, familiar because we had seen their photographs in illustrated papers all winter and unfamiliar because we never dreamed we would see them with our own eyes.

They did not look like conquerors; they were very quiet. They bought a great deal, all sugar things, cakes and candies, all silk stockings, women’s shoes, beauty products and fancy soaps, but always everlastingly what the American soldiers in the last war called ‘eats’ — that, is, anything sweet — and anything that looked like champagne.

They went up and down, but they were gentle, slightly sad, polite; and their voices when they spoke — they did not seem to talk much — were low, not at all resonant.

Everything about them was exactly like the photographs we had seen except themselves; they were not the least bit like we thought they would be. They admired Basket II and said to each other in German, ‘A beautiful dog.’ They were polite and considerate; they were, as the French said, correct. It was all very sad; they were sad, the French were sad, it was all sad, but not at all the way we thought it would be, not at all.

The French, the girls and boys and t he older men and older women, who also went up and down about their own affairs, had that retenue that is French — they neither noticed nor ignored the Germans. In all the three weeks that the Germans were in Belley there was no incident of any kind.

When the Germans left, in Belley, in Yenne, in Lyon, and I imagine everywhere else in France, they thanked the mayors and congratulated them upon the extraordinary discipline of their populations. The Germans called it discipline, but it was not — it was the state of being civilized that the French call retenue. It was all not at all what we had feared and expected, and it all was very wonderful and very sad.

The days went on; everybody began to work in the fields, nobody had anything to say, and everybody was waiting, waiting for the Germans to go away — ‘they.’

Everybody, when I went out walking and they were with the cows, would ask a little anxiously, ‘Is it eight o’clock yet?’ Everybody was supposed to be at home and with the shutters closed by eight o’clock. We went into Belley quite often and it was always just that, neither more nor less than just that.

And then finally one day we went in and as we turned into the main road they whistled. We did not suppose it had anything to do with us and in a way it did not, except that nobody was supposed to be on the main roads for two days because they were leaving, and the roads were to be kept open for them. We had not stopped when they whistled, but they did not bother us; they did not, one might say, bother anyone.

And then miles and miles of them went away and they were gone.

Everybody breathed again.

Everybody began to talk again, not about anything in particular, but they all just began to talk again.

The post office was open again and everybody began to worry about everybody’s husband and brother and father and nephew and son, everybody, and nobody had heard anything for so long.

Slowly they began to hear; some did not hear for a very long time, but more or less they all began to hear and they all began to write all the soldiers about coming home, and they said they were coming home and they did come home.

Gradually everybody began to realize that very few Frenchmen were dead; a great many were prisoners, but very few were dead; and a great load was lifted off France. It was not like the last war, when all the men were dead or badly wounded; practically nobody was wounded and very few were dead. Everybody forgot about being defeated, it was such a relief that their men were not dead.

The Germans had said that when they were here; they said lots and lots of Germans had been killed and very, very few French.

Later on I asked the returned French soldiers how they had succeeded in killing so many Germans and not any of them being killed themselves. They explained that there was terrific aerial bombardment, but that all the soldiers had to do was to lie down and the bombs exploded before they were hit. They said that the bombs were made to explode on buildings, not in the ground, and so civilians in a city like Auxerre were killed, but as the soldiers were in the open country they were not killed. Then, while the air bombardment was going on, the tanks broke through the French line, and opened out in a fan behind the French line; the German infantry, being in serried formation behind the tanks, were shot down and so a lot of them were killed, but as there were so many of them they finally exhausted the capacity of the French to kill them and they came through too, and so the French were made prisoners except a great many who made off into the fields and, walking twenty-five kilometres a day or finding a stray bicycle, got home.

Georges Rosset made it all very clear, his only regret was that he had lost all his accoutrement and particularly a very nice pair of socks that Alice Toklas had knitted for him out of very lovely wool. He wrote all about that before he managed to get home, but Alice Toklas said to his mother to write that she would immediately start another pair and anyway he would have a chocolate cake when he came home, and she did make a chocolate cake for him when he did come home, and he is home. They all are. The curé d’Ars had said that the women would plant the grain and the men would harvest it and here they were — they are harvesting it, and it is all harvested.

He also said that when everything was at its worst, then it would turn out to be at its best.

V

It is very true that all the old predictions are that there will be a complete disaster; one said that the cock would completely lose its feathers and that afterwards its feathers would be more beautiful than ever. The French do naturally not like that life is too easy, they like, like the phœnix, to rise from the ashes. They really do believe that those that win lose.

In the meantime the government of France had changed, but that did not worry anyone.

It was natural that, since the Third Republic had not defended them from their enemies, it would end.

As I said in Paris France, to the French a government is something outside which does not concern them; its business is policing, defending them from their enemies; it is to be hoped that it will not cost too much, and naturally it leaves everyone to lead their own French life.

And so naturally the government had changed, but their life was to go on all the same.

Everybody was happy, because their men were alive and a good many of them had come home. There were a great many difficulties, mostly concerning themselves with the question of gasoline and the question of butter.

These were the two things that bothered everybody the most.

French farmers need bread, wine, vegetables, and butter. Meat is a luxury, not a necessity, to be eaten when had, but never thought about in between; sugar and coffee a half luxury — you can do without but you miss it; but bread and wine and vegetables and butter you must have.

There was no lack of bread, wine, and vegetables; there was a moment of hesitation about bread, but the harvest was excellent, and there was no real lack; vegetables and wine are always there, and suddenly there was a question of butter. Whether it was because the Germans made such a fuss about butter that made the French think that butter could be a luxury or what I do not know, but suddenly butter became, as everybody said, une chose rare.

It was a puzzle — there were the same number of cows and so there was as much milk, but where was the butter?

Of course there was the trouble about gasoline. There being no gasoline, the milkmen could not make their rounds, but even so, what with bicycles and horses, milk was gathered in. But the butter?

There was a wild flurry about butter. The most sober of the farmers’ wives were fussed. Their milk was under contract to go to the dairies, and the dairy would not give them butter. Nobody in France talked about anything but butter. Well, one way or another, one did get enough butter to cook with and to eat, but everybody went somewhere else to get it and it was purchased silently; it was a whole history of intrigue and it did a great deal to make everybody forget about war and about government, and then all of a sudden everybody had butter and that was over.

Everybody breathed again; everybody could have bread, butter, wine, and vegetables, and so they forgot their troubles.

They settled down to get in their harvest. Just tonight one of the wagons, with its oxen, was coming in very late at night, about ten o’clock, loaded with wheat, and I said, ‘It is late. Is the harvest all in?’ ‘Yes,’ they said, ‘yes. There is our bread.’ It did not look like bread yet; it looked more like straw — but it was bread.

The only trouble left was the question of gasoline and that is still a trouble, and very complicated.

Of course there is none in France and they are trying to substitute for it charcoal, and that does very well for trucks, but it does not do for small cars, and how will there be any gasoline if the English keep blowing it up and besides not letting it pass?

The only way at present is not to use any, and to gather in what there is. Well, that seems to work all right, only it stopped all business, and so from time to time a day was given in which everybody who had any gasoline could go out. You could not buy any, but you could go out. And just now, the eighth of August, everybody says that everybody who has any gasoline can go about. ‘But,’said I to Madeleine Rops, ‘it did not say so in the paper.’ ’Ah, my dear,’said Madeleine, ‘after all you do not yet understand French logic. Nobody was allowed to rouler, and then all of a sudden they announced that after the twenty-fifth of August nobody is allowed to rouler. So, ma chère, that means that now everybody can rouler, otherwise why should they say that after the twenty-fifth it will all be contrôlé ? C’est simple,’ said Madeleine Rops. So we got out the car and went shopping into Belley, most exciting; it used to be a bit of a bore to have to go shopping into Belley, but now, as it can only be done unexpectedly, it is most exciting.

And so everybody is very busy accommodating themselves to everything, and I must say the French are really happy in combining and contriving and intriguing and succeeding, and above all in saving. This evening, in going out walking, I met the town’s people bringing in as much wood as they could carry; of course there are lots of woods around here and fallen branches and everybody is carrying in some for autumn burning.

I have been talking to the young people and asking them how they like it all and they said they are very pleased. They say now they can begin to feel that they have their future to create, that they were tired of the weak vices that they were ail indulging in, that if they had had an easy victory the vices would have been weaker and more of them, and now — well, now there is really something to do — they have to make France itself again and there is a future; and then there is to be lots of electricity and they want France to be self-sufficing, and they think it will be and they all think that French people were getting soft, and French people should not be soft. Well, anyway they are looking forward, and then besides they won’t all just go into the bureaucracy the way they were doing; they will have to find other things to do. In short, they feel alive and like it.

The older people, once they have gotten over the shock, do not seem to mind either; nobody seems to mind, as Madeleine Rops said after having come all the way from Bordeaux to Belley. Really, you know, you would not think that it was a defeated country — not at all; they seem much more wide-awake than they were.

Well, yes, they do a little regret the predictions, but still all the predictions said that the cock would lose its feathers but would come out more crowing than ever, and they all said that when the worst was there the best would follow; and then there was Sainte Odile, who said that after her blood flowed in June, four months after, France would be more glorious than ever. Well, why not?

I had my own private prediction, and that was that when I had cut all the box hedges in the garden the war would be all over. Well, the box hedge is all cut now today, the eighth of August, but the war is not all over yet. But anyway our light is lit and the shutters are open, and perhaps everybody will find out, as the French know so well, that the winner loses, and everybody will be, too, like the French, that is, tremendously occupied with the business of daily living, and that that will be enough.