It is a joy to walk down the Authie on a spring morning. The Citadelle towers above you on the left. You are conscious of its graceful immensity long after you have passed it. The little French cottages straggle down-stream from the Citadelle base. They are white and grey, red and white--French in construction from their tiny dormer windows to the neat little gardens with their bricked-up margins flushed by the stream. Long tree-lined boulevardes start away from the road which skirts the river; you can see for many kilometres along their length. The wine-barrels are piled beneath the plane-trees. The children play about them. You will come upon a château standing stately in its low ground fronting the river. And beyond the château, which marks the border of the town, you are in the richness of the river fields and the river slopes. Here are the elm-groves, and the clumps of soaring poplar, and the long lines of stubby willow clipped yearly by the hand of industry; they sprout long and delicate from the head. _Groseille_ and hop tangle about the bank. Far off on the ridges the white road traverses under its elms, picking a way among the hedged terraces. You see no denizens here other than the old men and the girls who are at work in the fields. From them you will have a cheery "_Bonjour_" and some shrewd remarks on the weather: "_Ah, oui!--toujours le travail, m'sieur--toujours! Mais ça ne fait rien: nous sommes contents--oui._" And so they are. Then you come to Gezaincourt. That fine old château in its _parc_. The _parc_ is of many acres, and there are deer in the woods of it, and a lake where the wild-fowl are.