at cake, which
invariably is all caved in and squashed out, as though the
cheese-maker had sat upon it while bringing it into the market in his
two-wheeled cart.

Likewise, when its temperature goes up, it becomes more of a liquid
than a solid; and it has an aroma by virtue of which it secures the
attention and commands the respect of the most casual passer-by. It is
more than just cheese. I should call it mother-of-cheese. It is to
other and lesser cheeses as civet cats are to canary birds--if you get
what I mean; and in its company the most boisterous Brie or the most
vociferous Camembert you ever saw becomes at once deaf and dumb.

Its flavour is wonderful. Mainly it is found in ancient Normandy; and,
among strangers, eating it--or, when it is in an especially fluid
state, drinking it--comes under the head of outdoor sports. But the
natives take it right into the same house with themselves.

And, no matter where we were--in Picardy, in Brittany, in the Vosges
or the Champagne, as the case might be--we had wonderful crusty bread
and delicious butter and a good light wine to go along with our meal.
We would sit at a bare table in the smoky cluttered interior of the
old kitchen, with the rafters just over our heads, and with the broken
tiles--or sometimes the bare earthen floor--beneath our feet, and
would eat our fill.

More times than once or twice or thrice I have known the mistress of
the house at settlement time to insist that we were overpaying her.
From a civilian compatriot she would have exacted the last sou of her
just due; but, because we were Americans and because our country had
sent its sons overseas to help her people save France, she, a
representative of the most canny and thrifty class in a country known
for the thriftiness of all its classes, hesitated to accept the full
amount of the sum we offered her in payment.

She believed us, of course, to be rich--in the eyes of the European
peasant all Americans are rich--and she was poor and hard put to it to
earn her living; but here was a chance for her to show in her own way
a sense of what she, as a Frenchwoman, felt for America. Somehow, the
more you see of the French, the less you care for the Germans.

Moving on up a few miles nearer the trenches, we would run into our
own people; and then we were sure of a greeting, and a chair apiece
and a tin plate and a tin cup apiece at an American mess. I have had
chuck with privates and I have had chow wi