ought it cold in spite of the sun, and was well wrapped up, with
my hands thrust into my big muff, but these men had beads of
perspiration standing on their bronzed faces under their steel
helmets.

Before the head of the line reached the turn into Voisins, a long shrill
whistle sounded. The line stopped. Someone said: "At last! My, but
this has been a hot march," and in a second every man had slipped
off his knapsack and had a cigarette in his mouth.

Almost all of them dropped to the ground, or lay down against the
bank. A few enterprising ones climbed the bank, to the field in front of
my lawn, to get a glimpse of the view, and they all said what everyone
says: "I say, this is the best point to see it."

I wondered what they would say to it if they could see it in summer
and autumn if they found it fine with its winter haze.

But that is not what gave me my thrill.

The rest was a short one. Two sharp whistles sounded down the hill.
Instantly everyone slipped on his sac, shouldered his gun, and at that
minute, down at the corner, the military band struck up "Chant du
Depart." Every hair on my head stood up. It is the first time I have
heard a band since the war broke out, and as the regiment swung
down the hill to the blare of brass--well, funnily enough, it seemed
less like war than ever. Habit is a deadly thing. I have heard that
band--a wonderful one, as such a regiment deserves,--many times
since, but it never makes my heart thump as it did when, so
unexpectedly, it cut the air that sunny afternoon.

I had so often seen those long lines marching in silence, as the
English and the French did to the Battle of the Marne, as all our
previous regiments have come and gone on the hillside, and never
seen a band or heard military music that I had ceased to associate
music with the soldiers, although I knew the bands played in the
battles and the bugle calls were a part of it.

We have had all sorts of military shows, which change the
atmosphere in which the quiet about us had been for months and
months only stirred by the far-off artillery.

One day, we had a review on the broad plain which lies along the
watershed between the Marne and the Grande Morin, overlooking the
heights on the far side of both valleys, with the Grande Route on one
side, and the walls to the wooded park of the handsome Chateau de
Quincy on the other. It was an imposing sight, with thousands of
steel-helmeted figures sac au dos et bayonne