In the great hall we greeted them with tables laid with food, and spread with wine and little presents beside each place.  They know how to do this, the princely Russians, so each man got a welcome to make him proud.  The band was there, and the long tables, the hot soup and the cigarettes.  All the men had washed at Torneo, and all of them wore clean cotton waistcoats.  Their hair was cut, too, but their faces hadn’t recovered.  One knew they would never be young again.  The Germans had done their work.  Semi-starvation and wounds had made old men of these poor Russian soldiers.  All was done that could be done to welcome them back, but no one could take it in for a time.  A sister in black distributed some little Testaments, each with a cross on it, and the soldiers kissed the symbol of suffering passionately.

They filed into their places at the tables, and the stretchers were placed in a row two deep up the whole length of the room.  In the middle of it stood an altar, covered with silver tinsel, and two priests in tinsel and gold stood beside it.  Upon it was the sacred ikon, and the everlasting Mother and Child smiled down at the men laid in helplessness and weakness at their feet.

A General welcomed the soldiers back; and when they were thanked in the name of the Emperor for what they had done, the tears coursed down their thin cheeks.  It was too pitiful and touching to be borne.  I remember thinking how quietly and sweetly a sister of mercy went from one group of soldiers to another, silently giving them handkerchiefs to dry their tears.  We are all mothers now, and our sons are so helpless, so much in need of us.

[Page Heading:  WOUNDED RUSSIANS]

Down the middle of the room were low tables for the men who lay down all the time.  They saluted the ikon, as all the soldiers did, and some service began which I was unable to follow.  I can’t tell what the soldiers said, or of what they were thinking.  About their comrades they said to Mme. Takmakoff that 25,000 of them had died in two days from neglect.  We shall never hear the worst perhaps.

There were three officers at a table.  One of them was shot through the throat, and was bandaged.  I saw him put all his food on one side, unable to swallow it.  Then a high official came and sat down and drank his health.  The officer raised his glass gallantly, and put his lips to the wine, but his throat was shot through, he made a face of agony, bowed to the great man opposite, and put down his glass.

Some surgeons in white began to go about, taking names and particulars of the men’s condition.  Everyone was kind to the returned soldiers, but they had borne too much.  Some day they will smile perhaps, but yesterday they were silent men returned from the dead, and not yet certain that their feet touched Russia again.

CHAPTER II

WAITING FOR WORK