“Well,” he said, with a pleasant laugh, “that is about as good an account of himself as many a brave soldier can give the night before his first battle “; and he passed me with a bow and I closed the door.

Half an hour later he came downstairs, all shaved and slicked up—­in a white sweater, white tennis shoes, with a silk handkerchief about his neck, and a fatigue cap set rakishly on the side of his head, as if there were no such thing as hot weather or war, while his orderly went up and brought his equipment down to the terrace, and began such a beating, brushing, and cleaning of boots as you never saw.

At the library door he stopped, looked in, and said, “This is nice”; and before I could get together decent French enough to say that I was honored—­or my house was—­at his approval, he asked if he might be so indiscreet as to take the liberty of inviting some of his fellow officers to come into the garden and see the view.  Naturally I replied that Monsieur le Chef-Major was at home and his comrades would be welcome to treat the garden as if it were theirs, and he made me another of his bows and marched away, to return in five minutes, accompanied by half a dozen officers and a priest.  As they passed the window, where I still sat, they all bowed at me solemnly, and Chef-Major Weitzel stopped to ask if madame would be so good as to join them, and explain the country, which was new to them all.

Naturally madame did not wish to.  I had not been out there since Saturday night—­was it less than forty-eight hours before?  But equally naturally I was ashamed to refuse.  It would, I know, seem super-sentimental to them.  So I reluctantly followed them out.  They stood in a group about me—­these men who had been in battles, come out safely, and were again advancing to the firing line as smilingly as one would go into a ballroom—­while I pointed out the towns and answered their questions, and no one was calmer or more keenly interested than the Breton priest, in his long soutane with the red cross on his arm.  All the time the cannon was booming in the northeast, but they paid no more attention to it than if it were a threshing-machine.

There was a young lieutenant in the group who finally noticed a sort of reluctance on my part-which I evidently had not been able to conceal—­to looking off at the plain, which I own I had been surprised to find as lovely as ever.  He taxed me with it, and I confessed, upon which he said:—­

“That will pass.  The day will come—­Nature is so made, luckily—­when you will look off there with pride, not pain, and be glad that you saw what may prove the turning of the tide in the noblest war ever fought for civilization.”

I wonder.

The chef-major turned to me—­caught me looking in the other direction—­to the west where deserted Esbly climbed the hill.

“May I be very indiscreet?” he asked.

I told him that he knew best.