king at something which we could not see. As we bade him adieu
he stared at us as though he saw us not, neither did he return our
salutation. We clambered back into our car and turned her head round
towards Compiegne. I shall never see Senlis again.

III

UNOFFICIAL INTERLUDES

XV

A "CONSEIL DE LA GUERRE"

Il y a une convenance et un pacte secret entre la jeunesse et la
guerre. Manier des armes, revetir l'uniforme, monter a cheval ou
marcher au commandement, _etre redoutable sans cesser d'etre
aimable_, depasser le voisin en audace, en vitesse, et en grace
s'il se peut, defier l'ennemi, connaitre l'aventure, jouer ce qui a
peu dure, ce qui est encore illusion, reve, ambition, ce qui est
encore une beaute, o jeunesse, voila ce que vous aimez! Vous n'etes
pas liee, vous n'etes pas fanee, vous pouvez courir le
monde.--RENE BAZIN, _Recits du temps de la guerre_.

Our little town was like the pool of Bethesda--never had I seen such a
multitude of impotent folk. The lame, the halt, and the blind
congregated here as if awaiting some miracle. I met them
everywhere--Zouaves, Turcos, French infantry of the line, in every stage
of infirmity. Our town was indeed but one vast hospital--orderly,
subdued, and tenebrous. Every hotel but our own was closed to visitors
and flew the Red Cross flag, displaying on its portals the register of
wounded like a roll-call. The streets at night, with their lights
extinguished, were subterranean in their darkness, and the single cafe,
faintly illuminated, looked like some mysterious grotto within which
the rows of bottles of cognac and Mattoni gleamed like veins of quartz
and felspar. We were, indeed, a race of troglodytes, and we were all
either very young or very old. Our adolescence was all called up to the
colours. There was never any news beyond a laconic bulletin issued from
the _Mairie_ at dusk, the typescript duplicates of which, posted up at
street-corners, we read in groups by the light of a guttering candle,
held up against the wall, and husbanded from the wind, by a little old
woman of incredible age with puckered cheeks like a withered apple and
hands like old oak. We were not very near the zone of war, yet not so
far as to escape its stratagems. Only a day or two before an armoured
motor-car, with German officers disguised in French uniforms, paid us a
stealthy visit, and, after shooting three gendarmes in reply to the