ill I saw nothing but
blood--in the air, in the sun, in the water.

* * *

I remember in that ghastly time seeing a woman put the match to a piece
whose gunner had just dropped dead. She fired with sure aim: her shot
swept straight into a knot of horsemen on the Neuilly road, and emptied
more than one saddle.

"You have a good sight," I said to her.

She smiled.

"This winter," she said slowly, "my children have all died for want of
food--one by one, the youngest first. Ever since then I want to hurt
something--always. Do you understand?"

I did understand: I do not know if you do. It is just these things that
make revolutions.

* * *

When I sit in the gloom here I see all the scenes of that pleasant life
pass like pictures before me.

No doubt I was often hot, often cold, often footsore, often ahungered
and athirst: no doubt; but all that has faded now. I only see the old,
lost, unforgotten brightness; the sunny roads, with the wild poppies
blowing in the wayside grass; the quaint little red roofs and peaked
towers that were thrust upward out of the rolling woods; the clear blue
skies, with the larks singing against the sun; the quiet, cool,
moss-grown towns, with old dreamy bells ringing sleepily above them; the
dull casements opening here and there to show a rose like a girl's
cheek, and a girl's face like the rose; the little wine-shops buried in
their climbing vines and their tall, many-coloured hollyhocks, from
which sometimes a cheery voice would cry, "Come, stay for a stoup of
wine, and pay us with a song."

Then, the nights when the people flocked to us, and the little tent was
lighted, and the women's and the children's mirth rang out in peals of
music; and the men vied with each other as to which should bear each of
us off to have bed and board under the cottage roof, or in the old
mill-house, or in the weaver's garret; the nights when the homely
supper-board was brightened and thought honoured by our presence; when
we told the black-eyed daughter's fortunes, and kept the children
round-eyed and flushing red with wonder at strange tales, and smoked
within the leaf-hung window with the father and his sons; and then went
out, quietly, alone in the moonlight, and saw the old cathedral white
and black in the shadows and the light; and strayed a little into its
dim aisles, and watched the thorn-crowned God upon the cross, and in the
cool fruit-scented air, in th