their emplacements. We let them work. Then our
big guns destroy their work."

"But what do they do, Joseph?"

"Well, they fire a few shots, and go to work again. But I'll tell you
something, madame, as sure as that we are both living, they would
not do a thing if we would only leave them in peace,--but we don't."

"Well, Joseph," I asked, "have you seen a Boche yet?"

"Oh, yes, madame, I've seen them. I see them, with a glass, working
in the fields, ploughing, and getting ready to plant them."

"And you don't do anything to prevent them?"

"Well, no. We can't very well. They always have a group of women
and children with every gang of workmen. They know, only too well,
that French guns will not fire at that kind of target. It is just the same
with their commissary trains--always women at the head, in the
middle, and in the rear."

Comment is unnecessary!

XXIX

December 6, 1916

Well, at last, the atmosphere on the hilltop is all changed. We have a
cantonnement de regiment again, and this time the most interesting
that we have ever had,--the 23d Dragoons, men on active service,
who are doing infantry work in the trenches at Tracy-le-Val, in the
Foret de Laigue, the nearest point to Paris, in the battle-front.

It is, as usual, only the decorative and picturesque side of war, but it
is tremendously interesting, more so than anything which has
happened since the Battle of the Marne.

As you never had soldiers quartered on you--and perhaps you never
will have--I wish you were here now.

It was just after lunch on Sunday--a grey, cold day, which had
dawned on a world covered with frost--that there came a knock at the
salon door. I opened it, and there stood a soldier, with his heels
together, and his hand at salute, who said: "Bon jour, madame, avez-
vous un lit pour un soldat?"

Of course I had a bed for a soldier, and said so at once.

You see it is all polite and formal, but if there is a corner in the house
which can serve the army the army has a right to it. Everyone is
offered the privilege of being prettily gracious about it, and of letting
it appear as if a favor were being extended to the army, but, in case
one does not yield willingly, along comes a superior officer and
imposes a guest on the house.

However, that sort of thing never happens here. In our commune the
soldiers are loved. The army is, for that matter, loved all over France.
No matter what else may be conspue, the crow