The cannonade was elaborate to-day--What desolation! This moonlighted scenery would sadden you profoundly--enough that man be that heartless he can utterly destroy and ruin nature beautiful, even to the very roots. The machine-guns sputter intermittently. Someone shouts: "Ah! Wonderful! How strange it is!" "What is the matter with you?" "Lieutenant, to-day is _Mardi Gras_!" IMAGINATIVE EXPRESSIONS, VERDUN. _March_, 1916. The sector is being frightfully bombarded and all one can do is to wait for the attack---- "Good morning, _mon petit_, is it going?----" "Yes, lieutenant, it's bad in the aquarium--has been that way all morning. I've changed my sex three times since you saw me a short while ago----" [Illustration: Ravin des Fontaines (Verdun) during bombardment.] MY ORDERLY HABERT, VERDUN. _March_, 1916. I have just returned from Verdun, worn out by fatigue, at the beginning of the afternoon, with the idea of getting a few hours sleep in the silent and empty house of Monsieur Louis. Habert, alone, had not left it. I had taken him as an orderly for the reason he was the father of five children. Besides, he is not a warrior and it is plainly uncomfortable for him to wait on us when the shells break around _Rue sur-l'eau_.[26] I am dying with envy to get into bed. I climb the stairs to the first floor where the bed is made. Habert has found a pretext not to accompany me---- The shells whistled angrily and fell thick and fast on the city. They seemed to say: "Ah! you wish to sleep--but just try it." At the end of a few seconds I slept profoundly---- What good sleep, what a deep sleep, during which Death itself would come without one knowing it---- I had, nevertheless, the vague sensation of having been shaken and left dizzy by an explosion that prevented my making a movement. I finished by opening my eyes. The room was yet filled with dust and smoke; the window frame and part of the wall were thrown on the quilt! It was with difficulty that I could extricate myself and I shouted: "Habert! Habert!" Not a reply---- Immediately I imagined that the poor boy had been killed. My clothes had been scattered around the room and I descended the stairs four at a time without taking the time to even put on my trousers---- "Habert! Habert!" He wasn't in the dining-room, nor in the kitchen where there were some broken glasses---- I opened the cellar door. The rascal was behind it with a bottle of my prune brandy in one hand and a little glass in the other---- "_Nom de Dieu!_ I catch you at it! You carry away and drink my prune brandy while your lieutenant is shelled in bed. To-morrow you will go into the first-line trenches, _misérable_--to the trenches, you understand me----" I read in his mocking eyes with his half-penitent air: "I'm easy about it, you like my chicken fricassée too well." A REGAL DINNER, VERDUN. _March_, 1916.