is attested by remains
more numerous and in better preservation than Italy affords save in a
very few places. And awe-inspiring evidences of medievalism's power
flank one at every step and turn. Without doubt, Foch made the most of
them.

Needless to remark, the commander-in-chief of the allied armies has not
confided to me what were his favorite excursions during these four years
at Montpellier. But I am quite sure that Aigues-Mortes was one of them.
And I like to think of him, as we know he looked then, pacing those
battlements and pondering the warfare of those militant ages when this
vast fortress in the wide salt marshes was one of the most formidable in
the world. What fullness of detail there must have been in the mental
pictures he was able to conjure of St. Louis embarking here on his two
crusades? What particularity in his appreciation of those defenses!

The place is, to-day, the very epitome of desolation--much more so than
if the fortifications were not so perfectly preserved. For they look as
if yesterday they might have been bristling with men-at-arms--whereas not
in centuries has their melancholy majesty served any other purpose than
that of raising reflections in those to whom the past speaks through her
monuments.

From Montpellier, Ferdinand Foch returned to Paris, in February, 1891, as
major on the general army staff.

He and Joffre had now the same rank. Joffre became lieutenant colonel in
1894 and colonel in 1897; similar promotions came to Foch in 1896 and
1903. He was six years later than Joffre in attaining a colonelcy, and
exactly that much later in becoming a general.

Neither man had a quick rise but Foch's was (as measurable in grades and
pay) specially slow.

About the time that Major Joffre went to the Soudan, to superintend the
building of a railway in the Sahara desert, Major Foch went to Vincennes
as commander of the mounted group of the Thirteenth Artillery.

Vincennes is on the southeastern skirts of Paris, close by the confluence
of the Seine and the Marne; about four miles or so from the Bastille,
which was the city's southeastern gate for three hundred years or
thereabouts, until the fortified inclosure on that side of the city was
enlarged under Louis XIV.

The fort of Vincennes was founded in the twelfth century to guard the
approach to Paris from the Marne valley. And on account of its pleasant
situation--close to good hunting and also to their capital--the cas