"You are the only foreigner left," they said, "except those who are
under armed guard, waiting to be taken to the Swiss frontier. Look!
there go the last of them!"
Through the glass windows of the hotel door I saw about two hundred
men marching away from the square surrounded by soldiers with
fixed bayonets. They carried bundles and seemed to droop under the
burden of them already. But I fancy their hearts were heaviest, and I
could see that these young men--waiters and hairdressers and
tradesmen mostly of Swiss nationality--were unwilling victims of this
tragedy of war which had suddenly thrust them out of their business
and smashed their small ambitions and booted them out of a country
which had given them a friendly welcome. On the other side of the
fixed bayonets were some women who wept as they called out
"Adieu!" to their fair-haired fellows. One of them held up a new-born
baby between the guards as she ran alongside, so that its little
wrinkled face touched the cheek of a young man who had a look of
agony in his eyes.
That night I heard the shrill notes of bugle calls and going to my
bedroom window listened to the clatter of horses' hoofs and saw the
dim forms of cavalry and guns going through the darkness--towards
the enemy.
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