in a hideous greenish suit,
and wearing a pancake cap, sat opposite me in the compartment I had
chosen. There was a hard, unfriendly look in his large, fat-encircled
eyes, a big mustache curved straight out over his lips, and the short
finger nails of his square, puffy fingers were deeply rimmed with dirt.
He caught sight of me reading a copy of an English weekly, and after
staring at me with an interest not entirely free from a certain
hostility, retreated behind the pages of the "Matin," and began picking
his teeth. Possibly he belonged to that provincial and prejudiced
handful to whom England will always be "Perfidious Albion," or else he
took me for an English civilian dodging military service. The French
press was following the English recruiting campaign very closely, and
the system of volunteer service was not without its critics.
"Conscription being considered in England" (On discute la conscription
en Angleterre), announced the "Matin" discreetly.

It was high noon; the train had arrived at Angouleme, and was taking
aboard a crowd of convalescents. On the station platform, their faces
relentlessly illumined by the brilliant light, stood about thirty
soldiers; a few were leaning on canes, one was without a right arm, some
had still the pallor of the sick, others seemed able-bodied and hearty.
Every man wore on the bosom of his coat about half a dozen little
aluminum medals dangling from bows of tricolor ribbon. "Pour les
blesses, s'il vous plait," cried a tall young woman in the costume and
blue cape of a Red-Cross nurse as she walked along the platform shaking
a tin collection box under the windows of the train.

To our compartment came three of the convalescents. One was a sturdy,
farmhand sort of fellow, with yellow hair and a yellow mustache--the
kind of man who might have been a Norman; he wore khaki puttees, brown
corduroy trousers, and a jacket which fitted his heavy, vigorous figure
rather snugly. Another was a little soul dressed in the "blue horizon"
from head to foot, a homely little soul with an egg-shaped head,
brown-green eyes, a retreating chin, and irregular teeth. The last,
wearing the old tenue, black jacket and red trousers, was a good-looking
fellow with rather handsome brown eyes. Comfortably stretched in a
corner, the Norman was deftly cutting slices of bread and meat which he
offered to his companions. Catching sight of my English paper, all three
stared at me with an interest and friendl