It was on one of these nights of sincere enthusiasm that the two friends heard an unexpected, astonishing piece of news. "They have killed Jaurés!" The groups were repeating it from one to another with an amazement which seemed to overpower their grief. "Jaurés assassinated! And what for?" The best popular element, which instinctively seeks an explanation of every proceeding, remained in suspense, not knowing which way to turn. The tribune dead, at the very moment that his word as welder of the people was most needed!…
Argensola thought immediately of Tchernoff. "What will our neighbors say?… The quiet, orderly people of Paris were fearing a revolution, and for a few moments Desnoyers believed that his cousin's auguries were about to be fulfilled. This assassination, with its retaliations, might be the signal for civil war. But the masses of the people, worn out with grief at the death of their hero, were waiting in tragic silence. All were seeing, beyond his dead body, the image of the country.
By the following morning, the danger had vanished. The laboring classes were talking of generals and war, showing each other their little military memorandums, announcing the date of their departure as soon as the order of mobilization should be published. "I go the second day." "I the first." Those of the standing army who were on leave were recalled individually to the barracks. All these events were tending in the same direction—war.
The Germans were invading Luxembourg; the Germans were ordering their armies to invade the French frontier when their ambassador was still in Paris making promises of peace. On the day after the death of Jaurés, the first of August, the people were crowding around some pieces of paper, written by hand and in evident haste. These papers were copies of other larger printed
