The officers are living in comparative luxury. I am established with a nice sweet elderly lady. I reach the house through a court that runs back of a saloon—which leaves me open to comments from the ungodly. The house is a model of neatness, as Madame is a childless widow, and after the manner of such, has espoused herself to her home. She is very devout, and glad to have M. l’Aumonier in the house, but I am a sore trial to her, as I have a constant run of callers, all of them wearing muddy hobnailed brogans. She says nothing to me, but I can hear her at all hours of the day lecturing little Mac about doors and windows and sawdust and dirt. I never hear him say anything in reply, except “Oui, Madame,” but somehow he seems to understand her voluble French and they get along very well together. I notice that our lads always strike up a quick acquaintance with the motherly French women. They work together, cooking at the fireplaces or washing clothes in the community fountain, keeping up some sort of friendly gossip and laughing all the while, though I never can understand how they manage it, for the villagers never learn any English and the soldiers have not more than forty words of French. After all a language is only a makeshift for expressing ourselves. “Qu’est-ce que c’est”—“Kesky,” and pointing supplies the nouns, gestures the verbs, and facial expressions the adjectives. LONGEAU _January_ 21st, 1918 Last night the church bells rang at midnight; and waking, I said: “Bombers overhead!” A minute later I heard the cry Fire! Fire! and the bugles raising the same alarm. It was a big stable at the south end of the town—we had gasoline stored in it and some soldier was careless. The street was thronged in an instant with running soldiers and civilians. The village firemen or _pompiers_ came running up at a plowman gait—looked the fire over—and went back to put on their proper uniforms. One old lad came all the way from Percey in a gendarme’s chapeau. He could not properly try to put out a fire in that headgear, so he went all the way back and arrived at last, puffing but satisfied, in the big _pompier_ nickel-plated helmet. Their big pump was pulled up to Longeau, and the hose was laid with the proper amount of ceremony and shouting, and the stream finally put on the blazing shed. The remainder of the population displayed little of the proverbial French excitability. They looked on with the air of men who can enjoy a good spectacle, happy in the thought that the rich American Government would have to pay for it.