buted. Whether or not the redistribution is a danger is
something none of us can know yet; that is a thing only the future can
show. One thing is certain, it has forcibly liberated women.

You ask how the cats are. They are remarkable. Khaki gets more
savage every day, and less like what I imagined a house cat ought to
be. He has thrashed every cat in the commune except Didine, and
never got a scratch to show for it. But he has never scratched me. I
slapped him the other day. He slapped back,--but with a velvet paw,
never even showed a claw.

Didn't you always think a cat hated water? I am sure I did. He goes
out in all weathers. Last winter he played in the snow like a child, and
rolled in it, and no rainstorm can keep him in the house. The other
day he insisted on going out in a pouring rain, and I got anxious about
him. Finally I went to the door and called him, and, after a while, he
walked out of the dog's kennel, gave me a reproachful look as if to
say, "Can't you leave a chap in peace?" and returned to the kennel.
The one thing he really hates is to have me leave the house. He goes
where his sweet will leads him, but he seems to think that I should be
always on the spot.

XXIV

May 23, 1916

I begin to believe that we shall have no normal settled weather until
all this cannon play is over. We've had most unseasonable hailstorms
which have knocked all the buds off the fruit-trees, so, in addition to
other annoyances, we shall have no fruit this year.

There is nothing new here except that General Foch is in the
ambulance at Meaux. No one knows it; not a word has appeared in
the newspapers. It was the result of a stupid, but unavoidable,
automobile accident. To avoid running over a woman and child on a
road near here, the automobile, in which he was travelling rapidly in
company with his son-in-law, ran against a tree and smashed. Luckily
he was not seriously hurt, though his head got damaged.

On Thursday Poincare passed over our hill, with Briand, en route to
meet Joffre at the General's bedside. I did not see them, but some of
the people at Quincy did. It was a lucky escape for Foch. He would
have hated to die during this war of a simple, unmilitary automobile
accident, and the army could ill afford just now to lose one of the
heroes of the Marne. Carefully as the fact has been concealed, we
knew it here through our ambulance, which is a branch of that at
Meaux, where he is being nursed.