[Illustration: MAXENCE]

The census indicates that in 1914 the total number of inhabitants
within this little village was seven hundred and fifty. Of these, one
hundred and forty men were mobilised, and forty-five have already been
killed. The masculine element, therefore, has been reduced to a
minimum.

Thevenet, the carpenter, grocery man and choir leader, gifted with a
strong voice and a shock of curly black hair, but lame in both legs, is
certainly, when seated behind his counter, the noblest specimen of the
stronger sex that the village possesses.

His pupil, disciple and companion, called Criquet, is, as his pseudonym
indicates, extremely small of stature, and though he regularly presents
himself before the draft boards, he has invariably been refused as far
too small to serve his country in the ranks.

Of course, there are quite a number of sturdy old men, who have had
ample occasion to do their bit by helping their daughters or their
sons' wives on their farms. So in the village itself there remains
hardly any one.

Old man Magnier is so bent with rheumatism that each movement is
accompanied by an alarming cracking of his bones, and one is tempted to
ask him not to stir for fear of suddenly seeing him drop to pieces, as
would an antiquated, over-dry grandfather clock, on being removed from
a long stay in the garret.

Monsiau, the inn-keeper, is ready and willing to do almost anything but
he is so terribly stout that the slightest physical effort causes him
to turn purple and gasp for breath. He therefore remains seated,
nodding like a big Buddha, half dozing over the harangues of his friend
Chavignon, the tailor, whose first name, by the way, is Pacifique. But
in order to belie this little war-like appellation, Chavignon spends
most of the time he owes to the trade dreaming of impossible plans and
preparing ghastly tortures, to which the Kaiser shall be submitted when
once we have caught him.

Bonnet, the hardware dealer, in spite of his seventy-eight years, comes
and goes at a lively pace--coughing, grumbling, mumbling--always in a
hurry, though he never has anything special to attend to.

And finally there is Laigut; Laigut whom one consults when at his wits'
end, simply because he knows everything in general, and nothing in
particular, his knowledge covering all the arts and sciences as resumed
in the Grand Encyclopedia. He is a little man with spectacles, and a
short grey beard, costumed wint