For with the entrance of Prosper Panne the mess-room became a scene at the _Folies Bergeres_. There was Mrs. Torrence, _premiere comedienne_, in the costume of a wild-western cowboy; there was the young Lieutenant himself, looking like a stage-lieutenant in the dark-green uniform of the Belgian Motor Cyclist Corps; and there was Prosper Panne. He began by picking up Mrs. Torrence's brown leather motor glove with its huge gauntlet, and examining it with the deliciously foolish bewilderment of the accomplished clown. After one or two failures, brilliantly improvised, he fixed it firmly on his head. The huge gauntlet, with its limp five fingers dangling over his left ear, became a rakish kepi with a five-pointed flap. Max--I mean Prosper Panne--wore it with an "_air impayable_." Out of his round, soft, putty-coloured face he made fifteen other faces in rapid succession, all incomparably absurd. He lit a cigarette and held it between his lower lip and his chin. The effect was of a miraculous transformation of those features, in which his upper lip disappeared altogether, his lower lip took on its functions, while his chin ceased to be a chin and became a lower lip. With this achievement Prosper Panne had his audience in the hollow of his hands. He could do what he liked with it. He did. He caused his motor-glove cap to fall from his head as if by some mysterious movement of its own. Then he went round the stalls and gravely and earnestly removed all our hats. With an air more and more "_impayable_" he wore each one of them in turn--the grey felt wide-awake of the wild-western cowboy, the knitted Jaeger head-gear of the little Arctic explorer, the dark-blue military cap with the red tassel assumed by Dr. Bird, even the green cap with the winged symbol of the young Belgian officer. By this time the young Belgian officer was so entirely the thrall of Prosper Panne that he didn't turn a hair. Flushed with success, Max rose to his top-notch. Moving slowly towards the open door (centre) with his back to his audience and his head turned towards it over his left shoulder, by some extraordinary dislocation of his hip-joints, he achieved the immemorial salutation of the _Folies Bergeres_--the last faint survival of the Old Athenian Comedy. Up till now Jean had affected to ignore the performance of his colleague. But under this supreme provocation he yielded to the Aristophanic impulse, and--_exit_ Max in the approved manner of the _Folies Bergeres_. * * * * * It is all over. The young Belgian officer has flown away on his motor cycle to pot Germans; Mrs. Torrence has gone off to the field with the Colonel on the quest of the greatest possible danger. The Ambulance has followed them there.