They were terribly pathetic.  As I watched them I tried to picture to myself what three and a half long years of captivity must have meant.  How often they must have dreamt of the exaltation of this day—­and now that it had arrived, they were not exalted.  They had the look of people so spiritually benumbed that they would never know despair or exaltation again.  They had a broken look; their shoulders were crushed and their skirts bedraggled.  Many of them carried babies—­pretty little beggars with flaxen hair.  It wasn’t difficult to guess their parentage.

As they were herded on the platform a low, strangled kind of moaning went up.  I watched individual lips to see where the sound came from.  I caught no movement.  The noise was the sighing of tired animals.  Every one had some treasured possession.  Here was an old man with an alarm-clock; there an aged woman with an empty bird-cage.  A boy carried half-a-dozen sauce-pans strung together.  Another had a spare pair of patched boots under his arm.  Quite a lot of them clutched a bundle of umbrellas.  I found myself reflecting that these were the remnants of families who had been robbed of everything that they valued in the world.  Whatever they had saved from the ruin ought to represent the possession which had claimed most of their affections, and yet—!  What did an alarm-clock, an empty bird-cage, a pair of patched boots, a string of sauce-pans, a bundle of ragged umbrellas signify in any life?  What utter poverty, if these were the best that they could save!

There was a band on the platform, consisting mainly of bugles and drums, to welcome them.  The leader is reputed to be the laziest man in the French Army.  It is said that they tried him at everything and then, in despair, sent him to Evian to drum forgotten happiness into the bones of repatries.  Whatever his former military record, he now does his utmost to impersonate the defiant and impassioned soul of France.  His moustaches are curled fiercely.  His brows are heavy as thunderclouds.  When he drums, the veins swell out in his neck with the violence of his energy.

Suddenly, with an ominous preliminary rumble, the band struck up the Marseillaise.  You should have seen the change in this crowd of corpses.  You must remember that these people had been so long accustomed to lies and snares that it would probably take days to persuade them that they were actually safe home in France.

As the battle-song for which they had suffered shook the air their lips rustled like leaves.  There was hardly any sound—­only a hoarse whisper.  Then, all of a sudden, words came—­an inarticulate, sobbing commotion.  Tears blinded the eyes of every spectator, even those who had witnessed similar scenes often; we were crying because the singing was so little human.