she was enduring, I don't know, for she didn't speak, or even sigh, and
Brian sat between them; so he couldn't have known she was trembling. It
must have been some electric current of sympathy between the husband
and wife, I suppose--a magnetic flash to which a blind man would be more
sensitive than others. Anyhow, he suddenly stopped speaking of the
fight, and told us instead about a dream he had the night before the
battle--a dream where he saw the ladies for whom "The Ladies' Way" was
made, go riding by, along the "Chemin des Dames."

"In silks and satins the ladies went
Where the breezes sighed and the poplars bent,
Taking the air of a Sunday morn
Midst the red of poppies and gold of corn--
Flowery ladies in gold brocades,
With negro pages and serving maids,
In scarlet coach or in gilt sedan,
With brooch and buckle and flounce and fan,
Patch and powder and trailing scent,
Under the trees the ladies went,
Lovely ladies that gleamed and glowed,
As they took the air of the Ladies' Road."

That verse came from _Punch_, not from Captain Devot. I happen to
remember it because it struck my fancy when I read it, and added to the
romance of the road made for Louis XV's daughters--daughters of France,
where now so many sons of France have died for France! But the ladies of
Captain Devot's dream were like that, travelling with a gorgeous
cavalcade, and as they rode, they were listening to a song about the old
Abbey of Vauclair on the plateau of the Craonne. When they came to a
place where the poppies clustered thickest, the three princesses
insisted on stopping--Princess Adelaide, Princess Sophia, Princess
Victoire. They wished to gather the flowers to take with them to the
Chateau de Bove, where they were going to visit their _dame d'honneur_,
Madame de Narbonne, but their guards argued that already it was growing
late: they had better hurry on. At this the girls laughed silvery
laughter. What did time matter to them? This was _their_ road, made and
paved for their pleasure! They would not be hurried along it. No indeed;
to show that time as well as the road was theirs, to do with as they
liked, they would get down and make a chain of poppies long enough to
stretch across the whole plateau before it dipped to the valley of the
Aillette!

So, in Captain Devot's dream, the princesses descended, and they and all
their pretty ladies began weaving a chain of poppies. As they w