By scraps, by fragments of phrases, for he speaks but little—little of himself, but instead launches out in real flights of declamation about an idea, a poem, a well-known tune, the names of artists—I have been able bit by bit and through deductions almost to reconstruct his life. He is a quiet man in all his ways, habits and ideas. He lived in the quarter of Saint-Sulpice in an old house in the quiet Rue Madame, and made his living by giving music lessons in the institutions in the neighborhood. They knew him in the quarter as “Monsieur Placide.” On the appointed days at the same hours he went to the Nuns of the Immaculate Conception, to the Brothers of the Sacred Heart, or to special lessons in the city, without ever wandering far away from the quarter, in the old venerable houses, in the Rues d’Assas and Garancière. On Sundays he played the organ in a small chapel of the Visitation Sisters. The people knew little about him through social intercourse, for he never went out, or rarely. In summer he sometimes went to the Tuileries to listen to secular music—and that is all. When in August, 1914, the notices of mobilization called all able-bodied men to arms, his orders were to join a regiment of Colonial infantry in a fort around Paris. This man lived a regular life apart from dangerous contingencies, and was unacquainted with worldly ambitions and political strife, but he went to war knowing nothing of it, and considering it only a little and then through a professional view-point, as a sort of great drama in which he was going to play a comparatively passive rôle. Under the cap and great coat of the infantryman, bristling all over with equipment, he was the typical “poilu”—the poilu of tradition. His large beard covered the front of his brown coat, and this gave him the proud appearance of a veteran. At first he was going to sacrifice this thick beard which he had spared since his liberation from his regiment, but his officers wanted him to keep it. That brought him a place at the head of the company on the march, and he drew all eyes. He was the poilu. His reputation as a musician who played on any and all instruments was quickly known throughout the cantonments. So he was at all the ceremonies and all the merrymakings. In the morning on a harmonium carried to an open field he might accompany a military mass said by stretcher-bearers, while that evening he might play on a chance piano, perhaps on the same harmonium, at improvised concerts, accompanying jolly, broad songs sung by amateurs and playing the national hymns of the Allies, and astonishing even himself in the patriotic choruses.