It was, above all, pitiful to know that somewhere to the east Teuton shell was ravaging country such as this. You found yourself saying: Is it such a valley as that in which the trenches are dug? Are German shell (and French shell, too) changing the whole topography of a province such as this?--smudging the sleeping landscape and tearing up the smiling crop. Is it in such a grove that the sacrilege of the guns is perpetrating itself? "Gad!" you would hear, "this country's worth fighting for!" In Egypt it's another thing. It is less unnatural that the godless sand of the desert should be stained and erupted; but this is different. And the old consolation comes--that has always consecrated the sacrifices of Gallipoli--that the ideals in question are more precious than any land, however fair. In the fields of the provinces it's women and bent old men who are working--and boys. They wave pathetically as the train rushes on. And in the towns there is not an eligible man to be seen--except in uniform. Seven in ten women are in mourning at any stage of the journey. One attempted at first to be consoled by the notion that the French temperament would put on mourning for a second and third cousin. But conversation with Frenchmen soon corrected that. Six in ten of these women wear weeds for a son or a brother or father or lover fallen in the two years that are past. It was a welcome and a half that the girls gave. Apart from all fighting, the deep-lined, barbed-wire Australian visage attracts in a land where the men are smooth-faced. And the notion of men fighting for France from the other end of the earth made no favour too much. Troop-trains had been passing at regular intervals for a month, and they were on the lookout for khaki. They swarmed to the stations with favours of fruit and flowers and embraces. They waved as the train came in; they chatted sweetly and unintelligibly at the platform; and they waved long and friendly as we moved away. The little children came with lilies and roses (little French girls are the loveliest things God ever made), and held up their faces to be kissed. And their big sisters not only did not blench at embraces, but invited them; and would get up and ride five miles _pour compagnie_. We stayed three hours at Avignon--at night. An Englishman we encountered on the station was so glad to see men of his own tongue that he took us about the streets and the cafés to show us the city proper, and missed his train without a pang. This was about midnight, and Avignon was just fairly awake. Trade in the cafés was at its zenith. Amongst other things we saw (for the first time) how tactful, shrewd, and charming a waitress a French provincial girl may be.