m the good soul corresponded, giving news of the ones to the others,
announcing misfortunes or joys--a living link between us all.

Left a widow when still quite young, Aunt Rose had lived with and
respected the memory of her husband. Though she had had many an offer,
she had never cared to remarry. But unable to stand the damp climate
of Normandy, she had returned to her family homestead in this little
city of the Bourbonnais, in whose suburbs she possessed quite a fortune
in farm lands. Alone in the world, with no immediate family, she had
devoted herself not only to her own, but to her husband's relatives.
Her home had always been the _havre de grace_, known and venerated by
them all; a meeting place for reconciliation between persons whose
self-control had escaped them; the shelter for prodigal and repentant
sons who awaited the forgiveness of their justly wrathful sires; the
comforting haven that seemed to assuage the pangs of departure and
bereavement. But above all it was the one spot for properly
celebrating family anniversaries, announcing engagements, and spending
joyous vacations.

The war had been the cause of a great deal of hard work in this respect.

"Why, I receive more letters than a State functionary," Aunt Rose
informed me when I came upon her early the next morning, already
installed behind her huge flat-topped desk, her tortoise-shell
spectacles tipped down towards the end of her very prominent nose.

"For nearly four years I've been writing on the average of twenty
letters a day and I never seem to catch up with my correspondence.
Why, I need a secretary just to sort out and classify it. You haven't
an idea the different places that I hear from. See, here are your
letters from the United States. Leon is in the Indo-Chinese Bank in
Oceania. Albert is mobilised at Laos, Quentin in Morocco. Jean-Paul
and Marcel are fighting at Saloniki; Emilien in Italy. Marie is
Superior in a convent at Madrid; Madeline, Sister of Charity at Cairo.
You see I've a world-wide correspondence.

"Look," she continued, opening a deep drawer in one side of her desk,
"here are the letters from my _poilus_ and, of course, these are only
the answered ones. The dear boys just love to write and not one of
them misses a week without doing so. I'm going to keep them all.
Their children may love to have them some day."

Then she opened a smaller drawer, and my eye fell upon a dozen or
fifteen packages, all differe