A little bemedaled group appeared on the steps of the hotel de ville.  Dominating it was Joffre.  Above middle height, silver-haired, elderly, he has a certain paternal look which his eye belies; Joffre’s eye is the hard eye of a commander-in-chief, the military eye, the eye of an Old Testament father if you will.  De Castelnau was speaking, making no gestures—­an old man with an ashen skin, deep-set eye and great hooked nose, a long cape concealed the thick, age-settled body.  Poincare stood listening, with a look at once worried and brave, the ghost of a sad smile lingering on a sensitive mouth.  Last of all came Petain, the protege of De Castelnau, who commanded at Verdun—­a tall, square-built man, not un-English in his appearance, with grizzled hair and the sober face of a thinker.  But his mouth and jaw are those of a man of action, and the look in his gray eyes is always changing.  Now it is speculative and analytic, now steely and cold.

In the shelter of a doorway stood a group of territorials, getting their first real news of the battle from a Paris newspaper.  I heard “Nous avons recule—­huit kilometres—­le general Petain—­” A motor-lorry drowned out the rest.

That night we were given orders to be ready to evacuate the chateau in case the Boches advanced.  The drivers slept in the ambulances, rising at intervals through the night to warm their engines.  The buzz of the motors sounded through the tall pines of the chateau park, drowning out the rumbling of the bombardment and the monotonous roaring of the flood.  Now and then a trench light, rising like a spectral star over the lines on the Hauts de Meuse, would shine reflected in the river.  At intervals attendants carried down the swampy paths to the chapel the bodies of soldiers who had died during the night.  The cannon flashing was terrific.  Just before dawn, half a dozen batteries of “seventy-fives” came in a swift trot down the shelled road; the men leaned over on their steaming horses, the harnesses rattled and jingled, and the cavalcade swept on, outlined a splendid instant against the mortar flashes and the streaks of day.

On my morning trip a soldier with bandaged arm was put beside me on the front seat.  He was about forty years old; a wiry black beard gave a certain fullness to his thin face, and his hands were pudgy and short of finger.  When he removed his helmet, I saw that he was bald.  A bad cold caused him to speak in a curious whispering tone, giving to everything he said the character of a grotesque confidence.

“What do you do en civil?” he asked.

I told him.

“I am a pastry cook,” he went on; “my specialty is Saint-Denis apple tarts.”

A marmite intended for the road landed in the river as he spoke.

“Have you ever had one?  They are very good when made with fresh cream.”  He sighed.

“How did you get wounded?” said I.

“Eclat d’obus,” he replied, as if that were the whole story.  After a pause he added, “Douaumont—­yesterday.”