True or not, it was one of those things that get believed. Verses were written about it and pictures made of it all over Paris--presently it would be history. And this girl, true child of the asphalt, was flinging it at them, holding the hearts of these broad-faced mothers in the hollow of her hand. She would sing one verse, pause, and sell copies of the song, then put a hand to her hoarse throat and sing again. The music was not sold with the song, and it was rather difficult--a mournful sort of recitative with sudden shifts into marching rhythm--and so the people sang the words over and over with her until they had almost learned the tune. You can imagine how a Frenchman--he was a young fellow, who lived in a rear tenement over on the other side of Montmartre--would write that song. The little boy, who was going to "free his brothers back there in Alsace" when he grew up, playing soldier--"Joyeux, il murmurait: Je suis petit, en somme, Mais viendra bien le jour, ou je serai un homme, Ardeat! Vaillanti..."--the Prussians--monstres odieux--smashing into the village, the cry "Maman! Maman!"--and after each verse a pause, and slowly and lower down, with the crowd joining in, "Petit--enfant" ("Little boy, close your big blue eyes, for the bandits are hideous and cruel, and they will kill you if they read your brave thoughts") "ferme tes grands yeux bleus." The violins mixed with the voices of the market-women, crying their artichokes and haricots, and above them rang--"Ardent! Vaillant! ..." Audit might have been the voice of Paris itself, lying down there in her mist, Paris of lost Alsace and hopeless revanche, of ardor and charm crushed once, as they might be again, as the voice of that pale girl in black, with her air of coming from lights and cigarette smoke, and of these simple mothers rose above the noise of the street, half dirge, half battle-cry, while out beyond somewhere the little soldiers in red breeches were fighting, and the fate of France hung in the balance, that morning. Chapter III After The Marne At the end of the village the road climbed again from the ravine and emerged on open fields. A wall of timber, dark and impenetrable as the woods round an old chateau, rose at the farther end of these fields--the road cutting through it like a tunnel--and on the brow of the ravine, commanding the road and the little plain, was a line of trenches. Here evidently they had fought. We walked on down the road. Below the northern horizon, where they were fighting now along the Aisne, rolled the sullen thunder of artillery, as it had been rolling since daylight. And the autumn wind, cold with the week of equinoctial rain, puffing out of thickets and across ravines, brought, every now and then, the horrible odor of death.