t beside him shrugged his
shoulders.

"Bismarck has called for the menu; his cannon are hungry," he
sneered; "there goes the bill of fare."

"That's very funny," said a fierce little man with a gray
mustache, "but the bill of fare isn't complete--the class of '71
has just been called out!" and he pointed to a placard freshly
pasted on the side of the station.

"The--the class of '71?" muttered the furtive-eyed peasant,
turning livid.

"Exactly--the bill of fare needs the hors d'oeuvres; you'll go as
an olive, and probably come back a sardine--in a box."

And the fierce little man grinned, lighted a cigarette, and
sauntered away, still grinning.

What did he care? He was a pompier and exempt.

VII

THE ROAD TO PARADISE

The road between Saint-Lys and Morteyn was not a military road,
but it was firm and smooth, and Jack drove back again towards the
Chateau at a smart trot, flicking at leaves and twigs with
Cecil's whip.

The sun had brushed the veil of rain from the horizon; the
leaves, fresh and tender, stirred and sparkled with dew in the
morning breeze, and all the air was sweet-scented. In the
stillness of the fields, where wheat stretched along the road
like a green river tinged with gold, there was something that
troubled him. Silence is oppressive to sinners and prophets. He
concluded he was the former, and sighed restlessly, looking out
across the fields, where, deep in the stalks of the wheat,
blood-red poppies opened like raw wounds. At other times he had
compared them to little fairy camp-fires; but his mood was
pessimistic, and he saw, in the furrows that the plough had
raised, the scars on the breast of a tortured earth; and he read
sermons in bundles of fresh-cut fagots; and death was written
where a sickle lay beside a pile of grass, crisping to hay in the
splendid sun of Lorraine.

What he did not see were the corn-flowers peeping at him with
dewy blue eyes; the vineyards, where the fruit hung faintly
touched with bloom; the field birds, the rosy-breasted finches,
the thrush, as speckled as her own eggs--no, nor did he hear
them; for the silence that weighed on his heart came from his
heart. Yet all the summer wind was athrill with harmony.
Thousands of feathered throats swelled and bubbled melody, from
the clouds to the feathery heath, from the scintillating azure in
the zenith to the roots of the glittering wheat where the
corn-flowers lay like bits of blue sky fallen to the ea