Another thing about the peasantry is that trench warfare does not weary them, the constant contact with the earth having nothing unusual in it. A friend of mine, the younger son of a great landed family of the province of Anjou, was captain of a company almost exclusively composed of peasants of his native region; he loved them as if they were his children, and they would follow him anywhere. The little company, almost to a man, was wiped out in the battles round Verdun. In a letter I received from this officer, a few days before his death, he related this anecdote. His company was waiting, in a new trench in a new region, for the Germans to attack. Suddenly the tension was relieved by a fierce little discussion carried on entirely in whispers. His soldiers appeared to be studying the earth of the trench. "What's the trouble about?" he asked. Came the answer, "They are quarreling as to whether the earth of this trench would best support cabbages or turnips." It is rare to find a French workman (ouvrier) in the trenches. They have all been taken out and sent home to make shells. The little group to which I was most attached, and for whose hospitality and friendly greeting I shall always be a debtor, consisted of Belin, a railroad clerk; Bonnefon, a student at the École des Beaux-Arts; Magne, a village schoolmaster in the Dauphiné; and Grétry, proprietor of a butcher's shop in the Latin Quarter of Paris. Belin and Magne had violins which they left in the care of a café-keeper in the village, and used to play on them just before dinner. The dinner was served in the house of the village woman who prepared the food of these four, for sous-officiers are entitled to eat by themselves if they can find any one kind enough to look after the cooking. If they can't, then they have to rely entirely on the substantial but hardly delicious cuisine of their regimental cuistot. However, at this village, Madame Brun, the widow of the local carpenter, had offered to take the popotte, as the French term an officer's mess. We ate in a room half parlor, half bedchamber, decorated exclusively with holy pictures. This was a good specimen menu--bread, vermicelli soup, apple fritters, potato salad, boiled beef, red wine, and coffee. Of this dinner, the Government furnished the potatoes, the bread, the meat, the coffee, the wine, and the condiments; private purses paid for the fritters, the vermicelli, and the bits of onion in the salad. Standing round their barns the private soldiers were having a tasty stew of meat and potatoes cooked by the field kitchen, bread, and a cupful of boiled lentils (known in the army as "edible bedbugs"), all washed down with the army pinard, or red wine.