Belin, our corporal, has served nine years in the Foreign Legion, and so he knows the ropes. The gentlest and pleasantest of companions. In the two first-class carriages, besides Roberty, are Reymond and myself, Maxence, whom I have already mentioned, a handsome fellow from the Franche-Comté, head taller than the rest of us, a lawyer and big landed proprietor, who knows Verlaine by heart, and lastly, Jacquard, Varlet and Charensac. The day is spent in eating preserved food, smoking pipes, playing cards, and roaring out songs and jokes. Sometimes the train stops for a couple of hours in the open country. Men go off into the fields for the sheer pleasure of disobeying orders and stretching their limbs; when they see the train once again on the move they come running up like madmen and soon overtake it, for the driver carries us along at a jog-trot pace. A comic alarm during the night: sudden firing in the neighbourhood of Troyes. Is the train being attacked, in the way we read about in a schoolboy's romance? Our valiant men, leaping up from sleep, immediately cram cartridges in their rifles and jump out on to the track. Simply a few petards exploded on the rails. Now we can sleep. _Thursday, 10th September._ Corbeil. Six hours' forced inactivity! We make some coffee along the track. A train full of wounded enters the station. We hurry to the doors of the vans and find that they are packed with soldiers of all sorts, lying _pêle-mêle_ on the floor, arms, legs and heads intertwined. The uniforms are unrecognizable and in rags, covered with dust and blood. And we, who are proceeding to the firing line, gaze open-mouthed on those who have just come back from it. Evidently there is terrible fighting going on, but the wounded have little to say. With a shake of the head they remark-- "Yes, yes, things are progressing ... but it's a tough business!" "We are winning, are we not?" "Yes, but it takes time!" Bayonet charges, frightful whirling gusts of shot and shell, fields and woods strewn with dead, the moaning of the wounded; such is a summary of what each man has witnessed, just a tiny corner of the battle. No clear general impression. Unshaken confidence in the final result, along with a consciousness of the difficulty of the task. A carriage filled with German prisoners. We elbow one another to catch a glimpse of them. One of them, his shoulder and arm all twisted up, asks-- "Are you reservists?" Some one nods assent. Thereupon he says-- "I, too, am a reservist like you." Anxious to create a feeling of sympathy, he exhibits his wound. I say to him-- "_Mon garçon_, you shouldn't have gone to war." No sooner has one train left the station than another steams up; for several hours the wounded file past without a break. At five in the evening the lieutenant, after a long conversation with the station-master, announces that the detachment is to cross Paris. Delirious joy.