Pau was compelled to give
ground.
On Tuesday German skirmishers with light artillery were coming
southward, and the sound of their field guns greeted my ears in that
town which I shall always remember with unpleasant recollections in
spite of its Old World beauty and the loveliness of the scene in which
it is set. It seemed to me that this was the right place to be in order
to get into touch with the French Army on the way to the capital. As a
matter of fact, it was the wrong place from all points of view; it was
nothing less than a deathtrap, and it was by a thousand-to-one chance
that I succeeded in escaping quite a nasty kind of fate.
I might have suspected that something was wrong with the place by the
strange look on the face of a friendly French peasant, whom I met. He
had described to me in a very vivid way the disposition of the French
troops on the neighboring hills. Down the road came suddenly parties of
peasants with fear in their eyes. Some of them were in farm carts and
put their horses to a stumbling gallop.
Women with blanched faces, carrying children in their arms, trudged
along the dusty highway, and it was clear that these people were afraid
of something behind them. There were not many of them, and when they had
passed the countryside was strangely and uncannily quiet.
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