There were thousands and hundreds of thousands of people who
would not wait for the trains. Along the southern road which goes
down to Tours there were sixty unbroken miles of them. They went in
every kind of vehicle--taxi-cabs for which rich people had paid
fabulous prices, motor-cars which had escaped the military
requisition, farmers' carts laden with several families and piles of
household goods, shop carts drawn by horses already tired to the
point of death, because of the weight of the people who had crowded
behind, pony traps, governess carts, and innumerable cycles.
But for the most part the people were on foot, and they trudged along,
bravely at first, quite gay, some of them, on the first stage of the
march; mothers carrying their babies, fathers hoisting children to their
shoulders, families stepping out together. They were of all classes,
rank and fortune being annihilated by this common tragedy. Elegant
women, whose beauty is known in the Paris salons, whose frivolity
perhaps in the past was the main purpose of their lives, were now on
a level with the peasant mothers of the French suburbs, and with the
midinettes of Montmartre--and their courage did not fail them so
quickly.
It was a tragic road.
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