The loquacious party (he hasn’t stopped even to take breath) says to his companion that he’s going to surprise his wife, who thinks he’s in Paris. Whatever else she’s enjoying, she must be enjoying the silence, and I do hope he’ll make a lot of noise when he opens the door. The young French officer next me with the _Légion d’Honneur_, _Croix de Guerre_, four palms and two stars, tells me he is with the Americans at Langres, which is _camouflé_ these war-days as A.P.O. 714, the ancient hill-town of the Haute-Marne being the setting for the celebrated “University” of the A.E.F. _11 o’clock, Romilly._—Near here, in the old Abbey of Scellières, was buried Voltaire, _l’enfant gâté du monde qu’il gâta_ (“spoiled child of the world that he spoiled”), having been refused ecclesiastical burial in Paris. And from here he journeyed in his dust to the Panthéon. At St.-Mesmin the sun came out, and the dull, plowed fields were suddenly spread with great covers, as of old-gold velvet, tucked in about the slender feet of pine forests. Now all this pleasant soil of France has many histories, and St.-Mesmin is where the priest Maximin (you see whence the name) was sent by the Bishop of Troyes to implore the mercy of Attila in favor of the great city. For answer the terrible king of the Huns put him to death. Against the sky is the tower of a twelfth-century church. A collection of objects in a field that I thought were plows turned out to be cannon. _Troyes._—Not a glimpse of the cathedral. Immeasurably long troop-train fills the station on one side of us. On the other a gorgeous (it’s the only word for it) American Red Cross train. Pressed against the windows, lying or sitting, were pale men of my race. I waved and smiled, and languid hands went up in answer. The box cars on the other side were filled with blue-clad men. Over the doors were green boughs, on the sides chalked portraits of the Kaiser, _Dur à croquer_, _Mort à Guillaume_, etc. And everywhere the once so familiar _On les aura_ is converted into _Nous les avons_.[2] Through the slits in the top of the cars were faces of _poilus_ looking out, just as one sees cattle looking out; then a long line of other box cars with American, khaki-capped heads also looking out of the slits in the top, while the side doors too were crowded with sitting, standing, leaning doughboys. Again I waved from my window, and every cap was lifted. There was a young man standing at the door of some sort of a refrigerator car, and he wore a wonderful goat-skin coat. Being so near my window I spoke to him, and said: “It’s a fine coat you are wearing.” “I’ll tell you in the spring,” was the prompt answer. “They’ve just given them out to us. You try living next to the cold storage.” He then proceeded to blow into some mottled fingers, after which he pulled a long tuft of hair from his coat. “I’m molting,” he added, as he held it up, “and winter’s coming.”