From the window a steep, walled garden fell away, dreary enough under the grey sky and the snowfall.  The same curious pale-green moss covered the trees, and beyond the garden wall, in a field, was a hole where a German aeroplane had dropped a bomb.

Hot coffee had been ordered, and we went into a smaller room for it.  Here there was a fire, with four French soldiers gathered round it.  One of them was writing at the table.  The others were having their palms read.

“You have a heart line,” said the palmist to one of them—­“a heart line like a windmill!”

I drank my coffee and listened.  I could understand only a part of it, but it was eminently cheerful.  They laughed, chaffed each other, and although my presence in the hotel must have caused much curiosity in that land of no women, they did not stare at me.  Indeed, it was I who did the gazing.

After a time I was given a room.  It was at the end of a whitewashed corridor, from which pine doors opened on either side into bedrooms.  The corridor was bare of carpet, the whole upstairs freezing cold.  There were none of the amenities.  My room was at the end.  It boasted two small windows, with a tiny stand between them containing a tin basin and a pitcher; a bed with one side of the mattress torn open and exposing a heterogeneous content that did not bear inspection; a pine chair, a candle and a stove.

They called it a stove.  It had a coal receptacle that was not as large as a porridge bowl, and one small lump of coal, pulverized, was all it held.  It was lighted with a handful of straw.  Turn your back and count ten, and it was out.  Across the foot of the bed was one of the Continental feather comforts which cover only one’s feet and let the rest freeze.

It was not so near the front as La Panne, but the windows rattled incessantly from the bombardment of Ypres.  I glanced through one of the windows.  The red tiles I had grown to know so well were not in evidence.  Most of the roofs were blue, a weathered and mottled blue, very lovely, but, like everything else about the town, exceedingly cold to look at.

Shortly after I had unpacked my few belongings I was presented to General Foch, not at headquarters, but at the house in which he was living.  He came out himself to meet me, attended by several of his officers, and asked at once if I had had dejeuner.  I had not, so he invited me to lunch with him and with his staff.

Dejeuner was ready and we went in immediately.  A long table had been laid for fourteen.  General Foch took his place at the centre of one of the long sides, and I was placed in the seat of honour directly across.  As his staff is very large, only a dozen officers dine with him.  The others, juniors in the service, are billeted through the town and have a separate mess.

Sitting where I did I had a very good opportunity to see the hero of Ypres, philosopher, strategist and theorist, whose theories were then bearing the supreme test of war.