About this time I got a telegram from Lord Beaverbrook asking me to meet him the next morning at Hesdin (Canadian Representatives' H.Q.); so I left Amiens early, arriving at Hesdin about 11.45 a.m. There they handed me a letter from him explaining to me that something very important had happened, and that he had left for Cassel. Would I have some lunch and follow him there? I lunched alone at the H.Q. and started for Cassel, where I arrived about 2.30, and found a letter telling me that he found that the aerodrome from which he wanted to get the news he desired was not near Cassel, so he had left, but would I meet him at the "Hotel du Louvre," Boulogne, at 4 p.m., as his boat left at 4.20? Away I went to Boulogne, and walked up and down outside the "Louvre." About ten minutes past four up breezed a car, and in it was a slim little man with an enormous head and two remarkable eyes. I saluted and tried to make military noises with my boots. Said he: "Are you Orpen?" "Yes, sir," said I. "Are you willing to work for the Canadians?" said he. "Certainly, sir," said I. "Well," said he, "that's all right. Jump in, and we'll go and have a drink." So down to the buffet we went, and we had a bottle of champagne in very quick time, and away he went on to the boat, without another word, smiling; and the smile continued till I lost sight of him round the corner of (p. 043) the jetty. A strange day: I wondered a lot on the way back to Amiens, where I arrived about 9.45. I never knew then what a good friend I had met. [Illustration: XVI. _A Grave in a Trench._] As before, in Cassel, I first began to realise how wonderful the workwomen of France were, so in Amiens I began to realise how different the young men of France were to what one was brought up at home to imagine. I had always been led to believe that an Englishman was a far finer example of the human race than a Frenchman; but it certainly is not so now. The young Frenchman is a keen, strong, hardy fellow, and his general level of physical development is very high. I remember this was brought home to me by having baths at Amiens. There was one bathroom in the hotel, and it contained a bath, but no hot water ran into it. So I told my batman to get hot water brought there in the mornings. The bathroom was on the first floor of the hotel, across on the other side of the courtyard from where I slept. The assistant cook, a man six feet odd high, and weighing about thirteen stone, a merry, jovial great giant, used to heat water for me and put it into an enormous bronze tub, which held a whole bathful; and he and my batman used to carry this upstairs; but if I happened to come along at the same time, this great man used to bend down and pick me up with his free hand and set me on his shoulder, and so to the bathroom.