s-dried linen. The high ceiling and the walls
are of white stucco. In bas-relief are clusters of heraldic signs, of
bishops' crooks and cathedral keys, of mounted chargers and dying
dragoons, of miter and crown, and trumpet and shield, and cross.

Large mirrors, circled with wreaths of gilded leaves, adorn both end
walls, and beneath one of them remains an ornate fireplace and
mantelpiece of bologna coloured marble, surmounted with a gilt cock of
wondrous design. Beneath the other mirror madame has placed her buffet,
on which the boy who explores the dusty caves below places the cobwebbed
bottles of red wine for the last cork pulling. Large gold chandeliers,
dangling with glass prisms, are suspended from high ceiling and flood
the room with light, against which the inner shutters of the tall
windows must be shut because of danger from the sky.

There is colour in that room. The Roman conquerors would have found it
interesting. If former armed occupants of the old town could have
paraded in their ancient habiliments through the room like a procession
from the martial past, they would have found much for their attention in
this scene of the martial present. American khaki seems to predominate,
although at several tables are Canadian officers in uniforms of the same
colour but of different tailoring.

The tables are flecked with all varieties of French uniforms, from
scarlet pants with solitary black stripes down the leg, to tunics of
horizon blue. In one corner there are two turbaned Algerians with heads
bent close over their black coffee, and one horn of the hall rack shows
a red fez with a gold crescent on the crown.

Consider the company. That freckle-faced youth with the fluffed reddish
hair of a bandmaster is a French aviator, and among the row of
decorations on his dark blue coat is one that he received by reason of a
well known adventure over the German lines, which cannot be mentioned
here. That American colonel whose short grey hair blends into the white
wall behind him is a former member of the United States war college and
one of the most important factors in the legislation that shaped the
present military status of his country. That other Frenchman with the
unusual gold shoulder straps is not a member of the French army. He is
a naval officer, and the daring with which he carried his mapping chart
along exposed portions of the line at Verdun and evolved the
mathematical data on which the French fired their