ian to procure a
white elephant as to dream of purchasing sufficient "gas" to make such
a trip.

There is nothing to do but take the train, and that means of locomotion
not only requires time, but patience and considerable good humour.
Railway service in France has been decidedly reduced, and while
travelling is permitted only to those persons who must needs do so, the
number of plausible motives alleged has greatly augmented, with the
result that trains are crowded to the extreme limit. To tell the
truth, a good third of the population is always moving. For how on
earth is one to prevent the parents of a wounded hero from crossing the
entire country to see him, or deny them the right to visit a lad at his
training camp?

This then accounts for the appearance of the Breton peasant's
beribboned hat and embroidered waistcoat on the promenades of the
Riviera, the Arlesian bonnet in the depths of Normandy, the Pyrenese
cap in Lorraine.

All this heterogeneous crowd forms a long line in front of the ticket
office, each one encumbered with a basket or a bag, a carpetsack or a
bundle containing pates and sausages, pastry and pickles, every known
local dainty which will recall the native village to the dear one so
far away.

It is thus that from Argentan to Caen I found myself seated between a
stout motherly person from Auvergne, and a little dark man from whose
direction was wafted so strong an odour of garlic that I had no
difficulty discerning from what region he hailed. Next to him were a
bourgeois couple whose mourning attire, red eyes and swollen faces
bespoke plainly enough the bereavement they had just suffered. Silent,
indifferent to everything and everybody, their hands spread out on
their knees, they stared into the ghastly emptiness, vainly seeking
consolation for their shattered dream, their grief-trammelled souls.

A heavily built couple of Norman farmers occupied the seats on either
side of the door, and then came a tall young girl and her mother, a
Belgian soldier, and finally a strange old creature wearing an
antiquated starched bonnet, a flowered shawl, and carrying an umbrella
such as one sees but in engravings illustrating the modes and customs
of the eighteenth century. She was literally buried beneath a
monumental basket which she insisted upon holding on her knees.

Every available inch of floor space was covered with crocks and kits
full of provisions, and in the rack above our heads were so