was all called up to the colours.  There was never any news beyond a laconic bulletin issued from the Mairie at dusk, the typescript duplicates of which, posted up at street-corners, we read in groups by the light of a guttering candle, held up against the wall, and husbanded from the wind, by a little old woman of incredible age with puckered cheeks like a withered apple and hands like old oak.  We were not very near the zone of war, yet not so far as to escape its stratagems.  Only a day or two before an armoured motor-car, with German officers disguised in French uniforms, paid us a stealthy visit, and, after shooting three gendarmes in reply to their insistent challenge, ended its temerarious career one dark night by rushing headlong over the broken arch of a bridge into the chasm beneath.  After that the rigour of our existence was, if anything, accentuated; much was “defendu,” and many things which were still lawful were not expedient.  Every one talked in subdued tones—­it was only the wounded who were gay, gay with an amazing insouciance.  True, there were the picture postcards in the shops—­I had forgotten them—­nothing more characteristically macabre have I ever seen.  One such I bought one morning—­a lively sketch of a German soldier dragging a child’s wooden horse behind him, and saluting his officer with, “Captain, here is the horse—­I have slain the horseman” ("Mon Gabidaine, ch’ai due le cavalier, foila le cheval").  It was labelled “Un Heros.”

It was at this little town, on a memorable afternoon early in the war, that I was first admitted to the freedom of the soldiers of France.  The ward was flooded with the soft lambent light of September sunshine, and it sheltered, I should say, some twenty-three men.  Four were playing cards at the bedside of a cheerful youth, who a few weeks earlier had answered on tripping feet to the cry of “Garcon!” in a big Paris hotel, and was now a sous-officier in 321st Regiment, recovering from wounds received in the thick of the fighting round Muelhausen.  He was enjoying his convalescence.  For a waiter to find himself waited upon was, he confided to me as the orderly brought in the soup, a peculiarly satisfying experience.  Charles Lamb would have agreed with him.  Has he not written that the ideal holiday is to watch another man doing your own job—­particularly if he does it badly?  The sous-officier nearly wept with joy when, a moment later, the orderly upset the soup.  With him was a plumber who was dealing the cards in that leisurely manner which appears to be one of the principal charms of the plumber’s vocation.  A paperhanger studied the wall-paper with a professional eye while he appropriated his cards.  An Alsatian completed the party.  In a distant corner a Turco, wearing his red fez upon his head, sat with his chin on his knees amid an improvised bivouac of bed-clothes and looked on uncomprehendingly.  The rest smoked cigarettes and toyed with the voluptuous pages of La Vie Parisienne.