experience of this sort I did long to have you there. It was
such a scene as I could not have believed possible in these days and
under these conditions if I had not actually taken part in it.

As soon as the officers had filed in and taken their seats the doors
and windows were thrown open to admit "la vague," and we all stood
up and faced about to see them come. It was a great sight.

In the aisle down the centre of the hall--there is only one,--between
the back row of reserved seats, stood Mlle. Henriette, in her white
uniform, white gloved, with the red cross holding her long white veil to
the nurse's coiffe which covered her pretty brown hair. Her slight, tall,
white figure was the only barrier to prevent "la vague" from sweeping
right over the hall to the stage. As they came through the door it did
not seem possible that anything could stop them--or even that they
could stop themselves--and I expected to see her crushed. Yet two
feet from her, the mass stopped--the front line became rigid as steel
and held back the rest, and, in a second, the wave had broken into
two parts and flowed into the benches at left and right, and, in less
time than it takes you to read this, they were packed on the benches,
packed in the windows, and hung up on the walls. A queer murmur,
half laugh and half applause, ran over the reserved seats, and the
tall, thin commandant beside me said softly, "That is the way they
came out of the trenches at Verdun." As I turned to sit down I had
impressed on my memory forever that sea of smiling, clean-shaven,
keen-eyed, wave on wave of French faces, all so young and so gay--
yet whose eyes had looked on things which will make a new France.

I am sending you the programme of the second matinee--I lost that of
the first.

I do wish, for many reasons, that you could have heard the recitation
by Brochard of Jean Bastia's "L'Autre Cortege," in which the poet
foresees the day "When Joffre shall return down the Champs
Elysees" to the frenzied cries of the populace saluting its victorious
army, and greeting with wild applause "Petain, who kept Verdun
inviolated," "De Castelnau, who three times in the fray saw a son fall
at his side," "Gouraud, the Fearless," "Marchand, who rushed on the
Boches brandishing his cane," "Mangin, who retook Douaumont,"
and "All those brave young officers, modest even in glory, whose
deeds the world knows without knowing their names," and the soldier
heroes who held the fro