“We always talk while eating,” said Bernard, “no matter how scanty or ignoble the repast. It’s our hour for relaxation.” (Any one lunching or dining at French officers’ messes will have noticed this.) “But with the English it is different. They eat silently, and in captivity they easily get the spleen and fall into melancholy, because the food isn’t served as they would like, or because they can’t wash or shave or exercise.” And I told the story of the brother of a French friend whom I had recently seen, just back from nearly four years’ captivity, who returned in such a stout, rosy condition that his sister was ashamed to show him, and when asked about her _pauvre frère_ would blush. We sat long, talking now of books, now of personages, now of local happenings, Sérin telling of passing that morning through one of the smaller villages where even the young girls had saluted him with a military salute as he rode by—and one of the officers said, with a flash, “_Très délivrées celles-là!_”(“Very delivered, those!”) Then some one told the story of the man who came down to Masevaux to make a book on Alsace and, seeing the line of the trenches marked that day in blue on the commandant’s map, remarked, in a _dégagé_ way, “_Le Rhin, n’est-ce pas?_” (“The Rhine, I suppose?”) “Not yet,” was the quiet answer. He then rushed them all off their feet for ten hours, after which, having got what _he_ wanted, he went back to Paris and wrote his book. And from what I hear it wasn’t a bad book, either. Though one of the officers said he knew he could do the same about Prague or Peking, that he’d never seen, with some books, a good pair of scissors and as much paste as he wanted. All is handled lightly, as only a group of Frenchmen could handle it, _glissant, n’appuyant jamais_, each bringing his little gift of wit and culture, enjoying the impersonal with the same pleasure as the personal, in the French way. Of course, the _communiqués_ are as honey after four years of bitter herbs, very bitter, even though distilled in extinguishable hope.