In the evening, under the glow of the gaslights, debates on the footpath would often degenerate into fisticuffs, with passers-by forced to intervene to separate the combatants. It must be said that never before had History been the subject of such passionate conjecture, with each edition filled with its fair share of dramas, new developments and contradictions.

Hardly three weeks earlier, the newspapers had been reporting nothing but French victories, so people had fancied themselves having the upper hand. Windows were bedecked with bunting, people were singing La Marseillaise, and this went on until the end of August, when families started to receive the first letters from soldiers.

Saarbrücken, Weissenburg, Wörth, Reichshoffen . . . the French army had suffered defeat after defeat. The illustrated journals had portrayed the carnage so vividly they had had to be hidden from young ladies’ view. The left-wing press had immediately leapt in and published in extenso various letters recounting the generals’ strategic foolishness and lack of preparation for war. People had stopped crying: To Berlin! They had removed the flags from their windows and started to recount tales of horror. There was talk of the pitiful state of military logistics, of dismantled regiments bivouacking in random locations, of the lack of preparedness in terms of munitions and other provisions. Of officers forced to go into schools to get their bearings, having thought about maps of the German territory they were to invade but not for a single moment about those of the French territory they had to cross. Of generals who had mistaken battlefields and others who had fired on their own camp. Every page bore the word disaster.

Auguste had seen the first soldiers returning from the front at the Gare de l’Est. Thin, exhausted, their uniforms saturated and looking as if they’d soaked up a year’s worth of foul weather, and mortified with shame, they avoided the looks of passers-by so as not to have to recount the debacle they had witnessed. Whenever he came across one of them, he would enquire after the 28th line infantry regiment, the regiment with whom he was supposed to have served and in which his substitute had been enlisted. He had finally learnt that the corps had fought in the Battle of Gravelotte on 16 August, which saw an artillery assault the likes of which had never been witnessed in military memory: 1200 deaths, 4420 missing in action and 6700 wounded on the French side, with mass graves filled to overflowing with bodies.

Where, among those thousands of people from whom no word was getting through, could Botquelen be? Was he at least still alive? Not a day went by when he did not think about him, and now young Perret was missing too.

Dear God, how he detested war!

A deathly silence! As of yesterday, Paris is alone, ran the headlines of Le Figaro.