d never fails to cry
"Vive l'Armee!" although there are places where the soldier is not
loved as a visitor.

I asked the adjutant in, and showed him the room. He wrote it down
in his book, saluted me again with a smiling, "Merci bien, madame,"
and went on to make the rounds of the hamlet, and examine the
resources of Voisins, Joncheroy, and Quincy.

The noncommissioned officers, who arrange the cantonnements, are
very clever about it. They seem to know, by instinct, just what sort of
a man to put in each house, and they rarely blunder.

All that Sunday afternoon they were running around in the mud and
the cold drizzle that was beginning to fall, arranging, not only quarters
for the men, but finding shelter for three times as many horses, and
that was not easy, although every old grange on the hilltop was
cleaned out and put in order.

For half an hour the adjutant tried to convince himself that he could
put four horses in the old grange on the north side of my house. I was
perfectly willing, only I knew that if one horse kicked once, the floor of
the loft would fall on him, and that if four horses kicked once, at least
three walls would fall in on them. That would not be so very important
to me, but I'd hate to have handsome army horses killed like that on
my premises.

He finally decided that I was right, and then I went with him up to
Amelie's to see what we could do. I never realized what a ruin of a
hamlet this is until that afternoon. By putting seven horses in the old
grange at Pere's,--a tumble-down old shack, where he keeps lumber
and dead farm wagons,--he never throws away or destroys anything--
we finally found places for all the horses. There were eleven at
Pere's, and it took Amelie and Pere all the rest of the afternoon to run
the stuff out of the old grange, which stands just at the turn of the
road, and has a huge broken door facing down the hill.

I often mean to send you a picture of that group of ruins--there are
five buildings in it. They were originally all joined together, but some of
them have had to be pulled down because they got too dangerous to
stand, and in the open spaces there is, in one place, a pavement of
red tiles, and in another the roof to a cellar, with stone steps leading
up to it. Not a bit of it is of any use to anyone, though the cellars
under them are used to store vegetables, and Amelie keeps rabbits
in one.

It was while we were arranging all this, and Amelie was assur