Varlet and Charensac have gone for a stroll to Soissons. They had to cut across fields to escape the gendarmes, who pursued them a considerable distance. They return hot and perspiring, greatly excited, and laden with rare dainties: any quantity of tobacco, chocolate, preserves, dubbing, writing-paper, couch grass brushes and pipes. Soissons is filled with English soldiers and business seems very thriving. The town is exceedingly animated. Every one is overjoyed at the thought that the place is free of the enemy. _Sunday, 4th October._ Still resting. Optimists assure us that the regiment is to stay a month at Courmelles. Letters long overdue now arrive along with the first parcels. One of them contains butter! Roberty's orderly, Jules, is nothing if not bold. Under the pretext that it is Sunday, he offers to shave us and cut our hair. He has not the faintest idea of the hair-dresser's art, though he is delighted at his prospective occupation. I am his first victim. The villain manages to convert my hair into a miniature staircase. Then he shaves me, and to the accompaniment of such remarks as "That's right!" "I'm improving!" he tears away the skin along with the hair. Terrified, I have not even the courage to request him to stop. The operation ended, I press little pads of wadding on to my bleeding chin and make my escape. My comrades hold their sides with laughter, Jules chuckles with pride and vanity as he asks-- "Next one?" The lieutenant sends for me-- "Guess who's here?" "A civilian?" "Come down and see." Girard! Maxime Girard of the _Figaro_. I press his hands with mingled affection and violence. After repeating a dozen times: "How small the world is, after all! To think of seeing you here!" we plunge at once into intimate conversation. Girard is even dirtier than I am. His face is entirely covered with a thick layer of dust. Nose and trousers are of the same greyish tint. Cheeks and chin are covered with a downy beard. His coat possesses only one row of buttons, but he is just as much a gentleman as ever he was. The mountebank corporal has promised to provide a good dinner; we may therefore invite Girard. He visits the kitchen. On seeing that we have at our disposal glasses and plates, dishes and a soup-tureen, a table and chairs, he slips away and only returns at the dinner-hour, shaven, brushed and washed, a man of the world. After coffee, benedictine, cigars and pipes. Girard relates his campaigns, which resemble our own: bullets and shells, marches, orders and counter-orders, dust and mud; wounded men passing to the rear and comrades falling dead. Then the precipitate falling back of the Germans, the welcome halting-places where you shake off all your troubles and worries so successfully that you actually think the war is over! _Monday, 5th October._