Things were going fine when the door opened at about nine thirty, and there stood two members of the American Provost Guard. They carried with them two orders. One instructed Madame, the proprietress, to dispense no more red ink or beer to American soldiers that night, and the other was a direction to all Americans around the table to get back to their billets for the night. The bunch left with reluctance but without a grumble. It was warm and comfortable within the _bar Parisian_ and Madame's smiles and red wine and beer and Camembert cheese composed the Broadway of many recent dreams. But they left without complaint. They made their rollicking departure, returning Madame's parting smiles, gallantly lifting their steel helmets and showering her with vociferous "bong swore's." And--well it simply must be told. She kissed the last one out out the door and, turning, wiped away a tear with the corner of her apron. Madame had seen youth on the way to the front before. The billets were comfortable. Some were better than others. Picket line details slept in their blankets in the hay over the stables. Gun crews drew beds and pallets on the floor in occupied houses. In these homes there was always that hour before retirement for the night when the old men and remaining women of the French household and their several military guests billeted in the place, would gather about the fireplace in the kitchen and regale one another with stories, recounted by the murder of French and English languages and a wealth of pantomime. Louise, the eighteen-year-old daughter of the town-crier--he who daily beat the drum in front of the Hotel de Ville and read lengthy bulletins, was interested in the workings of Gunner Black's colt automatic. Gunner Black, most anxious to show her, demonstrated the action of the pistol but, forgetting that inevitable shell in the chamber, shot himself in the arm. It was only an incident. The noise scared Louise, but not the wound. She had seen too many Americans get shot in the moving pictures. The captain and I were quartered in the house of the Cure of the cathedral. The old housekeeper of the place made the captain blush when she remarked her surprise that there were such young captains in the American army. Her name was Madame Dupont, and she was more than pleased to learn from the captain that that had been the maiden name of his mother. The captain's room had the interior dimensions and heavy decorations of the mystic inner sanctum of some secret grand lodge. Religious paintings and symbols hung from the walls, which were papered in dark red to match the heavy plush hangings over the ever closed windows. Two doors in the blank wall swung open revealing a hermetically sealed recess in which a bed just fitted. This arrangement, quite common in France, indicated that the device now popular in two-room sleeping apartments in America, must have been suggested by the sleeping customs of mediaeval times.