I look at Grizard. Hand on the handle of the gun, he follows the evolutions of the aeroplane; his eyes shine as at a good trick he is playing on the acrobat up there, and softly, with all the desired expressions, as if he were before his audience at Belleville or at the Gaîté-Montparnasse, he hums: _Rêve de valse, rêve d’un jour,_ _Valse de rêve, valse d’amour._ “He’s hit,” Sergeant Lace cries suddenly. And indeed he is hit. The wings waver, bend, warp, and abruptly fall in a spiral, while an immense burst of flame, which the speed increases immoderately, rises and marks the limpid blue of the sky with a long red thread which dissolves in the heavens in a trail of gold. With a noise of broken iron, tearing canvas, explosions which recall fireworks, the machine smashes into the fields, right where the last bomb had destroyed the peaceful herd of cows a moment ago. We run from all directions, but there is nothing to see. The aeroplane was completely destroyed by the fall and the fire, and ends by burning itself up. It is impossible to get the charred body of the aviator out from the smoking ruins. Grizard is on the scene with his gun crew, and examines his target. “Good shot!” We congratulate him and begin to go back. But Grizard is a comedian who knows his business and who has perhaps played a rôle in the circuits in faraway provinces, and he is not a man to miss an effect. He stands by the roadside in the courteous attitude of Cyrano de Bergerac pointing out the way to the Count de Guiche after amusing him for a quarter of an hour. And Grizard, who has amused us for a quarter of an hour, but in another way, points out the road and says: “The quarter of an hour is past, Messieurs. I release you.” CHAPTER IX DAYS IN CANTONMENT The regiment is holding the first line trenches in front of the La Vache woods. When the company is in the lines, the echelons, the war train, and the clerks remain behind in the cantonment at Morcourt. Morcourt is a delightful little village hidden in the green meadows under the poplars on the banks of the canal of the Somme. Morcourt was once a hamlet of one hundred and fifty houses and their flower gardens, but to-day it is a real village where there are crowded together a population of more than ten thousand men. More than twenty thousand horses are bivouacked in the neighboring villages of Proyart, Lamotte, Bayonvillers, which have no water, and they come to Morcourt twice a day to dry up the watering places. Our quarters here are in the open fields. Everybody can’t have covered shelters. The major of the cantonment showed us the field and said, “Try to make shift with that.” And we did. Less than an hour later the grass was mowed, ground down by our haltered horses, who devoured it with their sharp teeth. Beyond, on the edge of the road, in impeccable alignment our sixteen ammunition wagons are parked.