o set himself an abstruse and difficult
problem in mathematics, in order to see if his brain would respond. It
did so, he solved it and thus had no more fears as to his own ultimate
recovery.

Another story told by his sister, of these early army days, shows further
his power of mental abstraction.

"My brother was always lost in thought," says Mme. Artus. "No matter
what he did, his thoughts never left him. Once they caused his arrest as
a spy."

It seems that at Vauban, not far away from his home town of Rivesaltas,
they were constructing a fort. Joffre sauntered over to inspect it. He
was clad in civilian dress and he evinced so much interest in what was
going on that the commanding officer promptly seized him for a suspicious
character.

"Did my brother protest? Not he. But when they brought him before the
military court, his Catalonian brogue was enough to convince anybody as
to where he was born.

"'Why didn't you tell them who you were?' I asked him.

"'Too busy thinking about the fort,' was his reply."

One other anecdote of this time has come down to us and is worth
repeating. His father had bought a piece of farm land that was badly in
need of ditching, in order to drain it properly during the wet season,
and irrigate it during the dry. The son sketched out a scheme of cross
trenches, but his father demurred--then Joseph exploded:

"Trenches! What the devil! I know all about trenches; trenches are my
specialty."

The Great War of later years was to show whether or not this confidence
in his own abilities was misplaced.

By the year 1884, his reputation as a builder of trenches and forts was
firmly established, although official promotion had come slowly. When
Admiral Courbet telegraphed to the Home Office from the Isle of Formosa
for a reliable officer to place in charge of this work, Joffre was sent.
He spent nearly a year there and it was a year of the hardest kind of
work. He could get only indifferent help, so he worked early and late to
make up the deficit.

From there he was sent on similar work to the province of Tonkin,
Indo-China. Here he practically rebuilt the town of Hanoi, clearing and
guttering the streets, draining the neighboring marshes which had made
the settlement a pest-hole, and building permanent roads. The town of
Vietri was similarly cleaned up.

For these important labors he received the first recognition in nearly
ten years. He was given official thanks