The gardener believed that, as soon as war was declared, they would stop all the railways.

“Yes, to be sure; so that we shan’t get away,” said Françoise.

And the gardener would assent, with “Ay, they’re the cunning ones,” for he would not allow that war was anything but a kind of trick which the state attempted to play on the people, or that there was a man in the world who would not run away from it if he had the chance to do so.