One night at the end of August, I travelled from Paris to Geneva. At the
departure station the thousands of German workmen who had been expelled
from Paris were drawn up, waiting, herded together like cattle,--a
painful sight. These workmen were innocent of the war, the defeats, and
the spying service of which they were accused; now they were being
driven off in hordes, torn from their work, deprived of their bread, and
surrounded by inimical lookers-on.
As it had been said that trains to the South would cease next day, the
Geneva train was overfilled, and one had to be well satisfied to secure
a seat at all. My travelling companions of the masculine gender were
very unattractive: an impertinent and vulgar old Swiss who, as it was a
cold night, and he had no travelling-rug, wrapped himself up in four or
five of his dirty shirts--a most repulsive sight; a very precise young
Frenchman who, without a vestige of feeling for the fate of his country
and nation, explained to us that he had long had a wish to see Italy,
and had thought that now, business being in any case at a standstill,
the right moment had arrived.
The female travellers in the compartment were a Parisian, still young,
and her bright and charming fifteen-year-old daughter, whose beauty was
not unlike that of Mlle.
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