and you'll be fit!" exclaims the
enthusiastic father, while on the lashes of the smiling mother form two
bright tears which trickle unheeded down her cheeks.

There reigns a supernatural enthusiasm among all these youths; an
almost sacred fire burns in their eyes, their speech is pondered but
passionate. They are so glad, so proud to go. They know but one
fear--that of arriving too late.

"We don't want to belong to the Class that didn't fight."

And with it all they are so childlike and so simple--these heroes.

One afternoon, in a tea room near the Bon Marche, I noticed a soldier
in an obscure corner, who, his back turned to us, was finishing with
vigorous appetite, a plate of fancy cakes and pastry. (There was still
pastry in those days--1917.)

"Good!" thought I. "I'm glad to see some one who loves cakes enjoying
himself!"

The plate emptied, he waited a few minutes. Then presently he called
the attendant.

She leaned over, listened to his whispered order, smiled and
disappeared. A moment later she returned bearing a second well laden
dish.

It was not long before these cakes too had gone the way of their
predecessors.

I lingered a while anxious to see the face of this robust sweet tooth,
whose appetite had so delighted me.

He poured out and swallowed a last cup of tea, paid his bill and rose,
displaying as he turned about a pink and white beardless countenance,
that might have belonged to a boy of fifteen--suddenly grown to a man
during an attack of measles. On his breast was the _Medaille
Militaire_, and the _Croix de Guerre_, with three palms.

This mere infant must have jumped from his school to an aeroplane. At
any rate, I feel quite certain that he never before had been allowed
out alone with sufficient funds to gratify his youthful passion for
sweetmeats and, therefore, profiting by this first occasion, had
indulged himself to the limit. Can you blame him?

[1] The "Bananna"--slang for the Medaille Militaire--probably on
account of the green and yellow ribbon on which it hangs.

VIII

To go from Le Mans to Falaise, from Falaise to St. Lo; from St. Lo to
Morlaix, and thence to Poitiers would seem very easy on the map, and
with a motor, in times gone by it was a really royal itinerary, so
vastly different and picturesque are the various regions crossed. But
now that gasolene is handed out by the spoonful even to sanitary
formations, it would be just as easy for the civil