the latest novelty. But this
impression only lasted a moment. This soldier with gray hair and
near-sighted glasses who, in the midst of war, was retaining his
customary manner of a building director receiving his clients, showed
on moving his arms, some bandages and surgical dressings within his
sleeves, He was wounded in both wrists by the explosion of a shell, but
he was, nevertheless, sticking to his post.

"A devil of a honey-tongued, syrupy gentleman!" mused Don Marcelo. "Yet
he is undoubtedly an exceptional person!"

By this time, they had entered into the main office, a vast room which
received its light through a horizontal window about ten feet wide and
only a palm and a half high, reminding one of the open space between the
slats of a Venetian blind. Below it was a pine table filled with papers
and surrounded by stools. When occupying one of these seats, one's eyes
could sweep the entire plain. On the walls were electric apparatus,
acoustic tubes and telephones--many telephones.

The Commandant sorted and piled up the papers, offering the stools with
drawing-room punctilio.

"Here, Senator Lacour."

Desnoyers, humble attendant, took a seat at his side. The Commandant
now appeared to be the manager of a theatre, preparing to exhibit an
extraordinary show. He spread upon the table an enormous paper which
reproduced all the features of the plain extended before them--roads,
towns, fields, heights and valleys. Upon this map was a triangular group
of red lines in the form of an open fan; the vertex represented the
place where they were, and the broad part of the triangle was the limit
of the horizon which they were sweeping with their eyes.

"We are going to fire at that grove," said the artilleryman, pointing
to one end of the map. "There it is," he continued, designating a little
dark line. "Take your glasses."

But before they could adjust the binoculars, the Commandant placed a new
paper on top of the map. It was an enormous and somewhat hazy photograph
upon whose plan appeared a fan of red lines like the other one.

"Our aviators," explained the gunner courteously, "have taken this
morning some views of the enemy's positions. This is an enlargement from
our photographic laboratory. . . . According to this information, there
are two German regiments encamped in that wood."

Don Marcelo saw on the print the spot of woods, and within it white
lines which represented roads, and groups of little squares