FOOTNOTE: 

[9] Reputed author of the sequel to the chronicles of Guillaume de Nangis.  See M. Lacabane in the Bibliotheque de l’Ecole des Chartes (1e serie), t. iii.

XIV

THE CONCIERGE AT SENLIS

We rose early the next day, and, having paid our reckoning, were away betimes, for we were to visit the French lines and wished also to pay a flying visit to Senlis.  As we left Crepy-en-Valois we entered the Forest of Compiegne, a forest of noble beeches which rose tall and straight and grey like the piers of Beauvais Cathedral, their arms meeting overhead in an intricate vaulting through which we saw the winter sun in a sapphire sky.  We met two Chasseurs d’Afrique, mounted on superb Arabs and wearing red fez-like caps and yellow collar-bands.  They were like figures out of a canvas of Meissonier, recalling the spacious days when men went into action with all the pomp and circumstance of war, drums beating, colours flying, plumes nodding, and the air vibrant with the silvery notes of the bugle.  All that is past; to-day no bugle sounds the charge, and even the company commander’s whistle has given way to certain soft words for which the German mocking-bird will seek in vain in our Infantry Manual.  As for cuirass and helmet, the range of modern guns and rifles has made them a little too ingenuous.  And, sure enough, as we drove into Compiegne we found a squadron of dragoons as sombre as our own, in their mouse-coloured couvre-casques and cavalry cloaks, though their lances glinted in the sun.  Here all was animation.  Informal conventicles of Staff officers, with whom we exchanged greetings, stood about the square in front of the exquisite Hotel de Ville, with its high-pitched roof pierced with dormer-windows and crowned with many pinnacles.  North and east of Compiegne lie the zones of the respective armies, all linked up by telephone, and here we had to exchange our passes, for even a Staff officer may not enter one zone with a pass appropriate to another.  But our first objective was Senlis, which lay to the south of us between Compiegne and Paris.

The sun was high in the heavens as we turned south-west, and, keeping to the left bank of the river, skirted the forest.  Faint premonitions of spring already appeared; catkins drooped upon the hazels, primroses made patches of sulphur in the woods, and one almost expected to see the blackthorn in blossom.  Silver birches gleamed against the purple haze of the more distant woodlands.  The road ran straight as an arrow.  As we neared Senlis I was struck by the complete absence of all traffic upon the roads; no market carts came and went, neither did any wayfarer appear.  Not a wisp of smoke arose from the chimneys above the screen of trees.  We passed up a double avenue of elms—­just such an avenue as that along which M. Bergeret discussed metaphysics and theology with the Abbe Lantaigne—­yet not a soul