“They are the soldiers of the Revolution,” exclaimed Lacour with enthusiasm.  “France has returned to 1792.”

The two captains established their charges for the night in a half-ruined town where one of their divisions had its headquarters, and then took their leave.  Others would act as their escort the following morning.

The two friends were lodging in the Hotel de la Siren, an old inn with its front gnawed by shell-fire.  The proprietor showed them with pride a window broken in the form of a crater.  This window had made the old tavern sign—­a woman of iron with the tail of a fish—­sink into insignificance.  As Desnoyers was occupying the room next to the one that had received the mark of the shell, the inn-keeper was anxious to point it out to them before they went to bed.

Everything was broken—­walls, floor, roof.  The furniture, a pile of splinters in the corner; the flowered wall paper, a fringe of tatters hanging from the walls.  Through an enormous hole they could see the stars and feel the chill of the night.  The owner stated that this destruction was not the work of the Germans, but was caused by a projectile from one of the seventy-fives when repelling the invaders from the village.  And he beamed on the ruin with patriotic pride, repeating: 

“There’s a sample of French marksmanship for you!  How do you like the workings of the seventy-fives? . . .  What do you think of that now? . . .”

In spite of the fatigue of the journey, Don Marcelo slept badly, excited by the thought that his son was not far away.

An hour before daybreak, they left the village, in an automobile, guided by another official.  On both sides of the road, they saw camps and camps.  They left behind the parks of munitions, passed the third line of troops, and then the second.  Thousands and thousands of men were bivouacking there in the open, improvising as best they could their habitations.  These human ant-hills seemed vaguely to recall, with the variety of uniforms and races, some of the mighty invasions of history; but it was not a nation en marche.  The exodus of people takes with it the women and children.  Here there were nothing but men, men everywhere.

All kinds of housing ever used by humanity were here utilized, these military assemblages beginning with the cave.  Caverns and quarries were serving as barracks.  Some low huts recalled the American ranch; others, high and conical, were facsimiles of the gurbi of Africa.  Many of the soldiers had come from the colonies; some had been living as business men in the new world, and upon having to provide a house more stable than the canvas tent, had recalled the architecture of the tribes with which they had had dealings.  In this conglomerate of combatants, there were also Moors, blacks and Asiatics who were accustomed to live outside the cities and had acquired in the open a physical superiority which made them more masterful than the civilized peoples.