Our pass from the General Head-quarters carried us to Sainte Menehould on the edge of the Argonne, where we had to apply to the Head-quarters of the division for a farther extension.  The Staff are lodged in a house considerably the worse for German occupancy, where offices have been improvised by means of wooden hoardings, and where, sitting in a bare passage on a frayed damask sofa surmounted by theatrical posters and faced by a bed with a plum-coloured counterpane, we listened for a while to the jingle of telephones, the rat-tat of typewriters, the steady hum of dictation and the coming and going of hurried despatch-bearers and orderlies.  The extension to the permit was presently delivered with the courteous request that we should push on to Verdun as fast as possible, as civilian motors were not wanted on the road that afternoon; and this request, coupled with the evident stir of activity at Head-quarters, gave us the impression that there must be a good deal happening beyond the low line of hills to the north.  How much there was we were soon to know.

We left Sainte Menehould at about eleven, and before twelve o’clock we were nearing a large village on a ridge from which the land swept away to right and left in ample reaches.  The first glimpse of the outlying houses showed nothing unusual; but presently the main street turned and dipped downward, and below and beyond us lay a long stretch of ruins:  the calcined remains of Clermont-en-Argonne, destroyed by the Germans on the 4th of September.  The free and lofty situation of the little town—­for it was really a good deal more than a village—­makes its present state the more lamentable.  One can see it from so far off, and through the torn traceries of its ruined church the eye travels over so lovely a stretch of country!  No doubt its beauty enriched the joy of wrecking it.

At the farther end of what was once the main street another small knot of houses has survived.  Chief among them is the Hospice for old men, where Sister Gabrielle Rosnet, when the authorities of Clermont took to their heels, stayed behind to defend her charges, and where, ever since, she has nursed an undiminishing stream of wounded from the eastern front.  We found Soeur Rosnet, with her Sisters, preparing the midday meal of her patients in the little kitchen of the Hospice:  the kitchen which is also her dining-room and private office.  She insisted on our finding time to share the filet and fried potatoes that were just being taken off the stove, and while we lunched she told us the story of the invasion—­of the Hospice doors broken down “a coups de crosse” and the grey officers bursting in with revolvers, and finding her there before them, in the big vaulted vestibule, “alone with my old men and my Sisters.”  Soeur Gabrielle Rosnet is a small round active woman, with a shrewd and ruddy face of the type that looks out calmly from the dark background of certain Flemish pictures.  Her blue eyes are full of warmth and