drinking, and sleeping, even having thoughts not akin
to knighthood; but now, through the ordeal of blood and fire, each one
of them has won his spurs and come out a chivalrous knight, and
they bring their chivalry right into the hospitals with them. We had
also learned to love them for their kindness to one another. When new
wounded are brought in and the lights are low in the hospital wards,
cautiously watching if the nurse is looking (luckily nurses have a way
of not seeing everything), one of the convalescents will creep from his
bed to the side of the new arrival and ask the inevitable question:
"D'ou viens-tu?" ("Where do you come from?"). "I come from Toulouse,"
replies the man. "Ah!" says the inquirer, "my wife's grandmother had a
cousin who lived near Toulouse." That is quite a sufficient basis for a
friendship; the convalescent sits by the bedside of his new comrade,
holding the man's hand whilst his wounds are being dressed, telling him
he knows of the pain--that he, too, has suffered, and that soon all
will be well.

[Illustration: Menu, 27 Juillet]

[Illustration: Note by General Nivelle]

Lions to fight, ever ready to answer to the call of the defence of their
country, yet these men of France are tender and gentle. In one hospital
through which I passed there was a baby. It was a military hospital, and
no civilian had any right there, but the medical officers who inspected
the hospital were remarkably blind--none of them could ever see the
baby. One of the soldiers passing through a bombarded village saw a
little body lying in the mud, and although he believed the child to be
dead, he stooped down and picked it up. At the evacuating station the
baby and the soldier were sent to the hospital together; the doctors
operated upon the baby and took a piece of shrapnel from its back, and
once well and strong it constituted itself lord and master and king of
all it surveyed. When it woke in the morning it would call "Papa," and
twenty fathers answered to its call. All the pent-up love of the men for
their own little ones from whom they had been parted for so long they
lavished on the tiny stranger, but all his affection and his whole heart
belonged to the rough miner-soldier who had brought him in. As the
shadows fell one saw the man walking up and down the ward with the child
in his arms, crooning the Marseillaise until the tired little eyes
closed. He had obtained permission from the authorities to adopt the