As we wended our way back in the evening, the incessant croaking of the frogs in the big lake was the only sound that broke the stillness.  There was something sinister about it as if they were croaking “We are the only creatures who now live in this beautiful place, and it is we, with our ugly voices and bodies, who have triumphed over the beautiful vain ladies who threw pebbles at us long ago from the terraces.”—­We turned away, and the croaking seemed to become more triumphant and echoed in our ears long after we had left the vicinity.

At night, in Paris, aeroplanes flew round and round the city on scout duty switching on lights at intervals that made them look like travelling stars.  They often woke one up, and the noise of the engines was so loud it seemed sometimes as if they must fly straight through one’s window.  I used to love to get up early and go down to “Les Halles,” the French Covent Garden, and come back with literally armfuls of roses of all shades of delicate pink, white, and cream.  Tante Rose (the only name I ever knew her by) was a widow, and the aunt of my friend.  She was one of the vieille noblesse and had a charming house in Passy, and was as interesting to listen to as a book.  She asked me one day if I would care to go with her to a Memorial Service at the Sacre-Coeur.  Looking out of her windows we could see the church dominating Paris from the heights of Montmartre, the mosque-like appearance of its architecture gleaming white against the sky.

At that moment the dying rays of the sun lit up the golden cross surmounting it, and presently the whole building became a delicate rose pink and seemed almost to float above the city, all blue in the haze of the evening below.  It was wonderful, and a picture I shall always carry in my mind.  I replied I would love to go, and on the following day we toiled up the dazzling white steps.  The service was, I think, the most impressive I have ever attended.  Crowds flocked to it, all or nearly all in that uniform of deep-mourning incomparably chic, incomparably French, and gaining daily in popularity.  Long before the service began the place was packed to suffocation.  Tante Rose looked proudly round and whispered to me, “Ah, my little one, you see here those who have given their all for France.”  Indeed it seemed so on looking round at those white-faced women; and how I wished that some of the people in England, who had not been touched by the war, or who at that time (June, 1915) hardly realized there even was one, could have been present.

During another visit to Tante Rose’s I heard the following story from an infirmiere.  A wounded German was brought to one of the French hospitals.  In the bed adjoining lay a Zouave who had had his leg amputated.  The Boche asked for a drink of hot water, the hottest obtainable.  When the Nurse brought it to him he took the glass, and without a word threw the scalding contents in