I know what the newspapers are. They pretend to give you the war news. But I'll bet they'll tell you nothing of yesterday's really great event, when the Commander of No. 1 Platoon took a hot bath, as it were under municipal auspices, attended by two Company Headquarters orderlies, his own batman, and the cordially expressed felicitations of his brother officers, not to mention the mayoral household, and the whole of No. 1 Platoon, which is billeted in the Mayor's barns and outbuildings. Early in the day the best wash-tub had been commandeered for this interesting ceremony, and I fancy it has an even longer history behind it than the Mayor's pre-Revolution home. It is not definitely known that Marie Antoinette used this tub, bathing being an infrequent luxury in her day; but if she had been cursed with our modern craze for washing, and chanced to spend more than a year or so in this mud-set village of M----, she certainly would have used this venerable vessel, which, I gather, began life as the half of a cider barrel, and still does duty of that sort on occasion, and as a receptacle for the storing of potatoes and other nutritious roots, when not required for the more intimate service of M. le Maire's mother, for the washing of M. le Maire's corduroys and underwear, or by M. le Maire himself, at the season of Michaelmas, I believe, in connection with the solemn rite of his own annual bath, which festival was omitted this year out of deference to popular opinion, because of the war. The household of the Mayor, headed by this respected functionary himself, received me at the portals of his ancestral home and ushered me most kindly and graciously, if with a dash of grave, half-pitying commiseration, to what I thought at first was the family vault, though, as I presently discovered, it was in reality the mayoral salon or best parlour--as seen in war time--draped in sacking and year-old cobwebs. Here, after some rather embarrassing conversation, chiefly gesticulatory on my side--my conversational long suit is "Pas du tout! Merci beaucoup," and "Mais oui, Madame," with an occasional "Parfaitement," stirred in now and again, not with any meaning, but as a kind of guarantee of good faith, because I think it sounds amiable, if not indeed like my lambs in their billets, "Bien gentil," and "Très convenable, Monsieur." It is thus they are invariably described to me when I go inspecting. As I was saying, here I was presently left alone with the household cat, two sick rabbits in a sort of cage which must once have housed a cockatoo or parrot, my own little towel (a torn half, you know, designed to reduce valise weight), my sponge (but, alack! not my dear old worn-out nail-brush, now lying in trenches on Salisbury Plain), and the prehistoric wash-tub, now one quarter filled by what the Mayor regarded, I gathered, as perhaps the largest quantity of hot water ever accumulated in one place--two kettles and one oil-can full, carried by the orderlies.