told me that his comrades had told him that
there was an American lady here who did not seem to be bored if the
soldiers called on her.

"Alors," he added, "I have come to make you a visit."

I asked him in.

He accepted the invitation. He thrust his fatigue cap into his pocket,
took off his topcoat, threw it on the back of a chair, which he drew up
to the fire, beside mine, and at a gesture from me he sat down.

"Hmmm," I thought. "This is a new proposition."

The other soldiers never sit down even when invited. They prefer to
keep on their feet.

Ever since I began to see so much of the army, I have asked myself
more than once, "Where are the fils de famille"? They can't all be
officers, or all in the heavy artillery, or all in the cavalry. But I had
never seen one, to know him, in the infantry. This man was in every
way a new experience, even among the noncommissioned officers I
had seen. He was more at his ease. He stayed nearly two hours. We
talked politics, art, literature, even religion--he was a good Catholic--
just as one talks at a tea-party when one finds a man who is
cultivated, and can talk, and he was evidently cultivated, and he
talked awfully well.

He examined the library, borrowed a volume of Flaubert, and finally,
after he had asked me all sorts of questions--where I came from; how
I happened to be here; and even to "explain Mr. Wilson," I responded
by asking him what he did in civil life.

He was leaning against the high mantel, saying a wood fire was
delicious. He smiled down on me and replied: "Nothing."

"Enfin!" I said to myself. "Here he is--the 'fils de famille' for whom I
have been looking." So I smiled back and asked him, in that case, if it
were not too indiscreet--what he did to kill time?

"Well," he said, "I have a very pretty, altogether charming wife, and I
have three little children. I live part of the time in Paris, and part of
the time at Cannes, and I manage to keep busy."

It seemed becoming for me to say "Beg pardon and thank you," and
he bowed and smiled an "il n'y a pas de quoi," thanked me for a
pleasant afternoon--an "unusual kind of pleasure," he added, "for a
soldier in these times," and went away.

It was only when I saw him going that it occurred to me that I ought to
have offered him tea--but you know the worth of "esprit d'escalier."

Naturally I was curious about him, so the next time I saw the
Canadian I asked him who he was. "Oh," he replied, "he is a