I was tucking the children into bed after their bath, my rosy, romping, noisy children, when "le soldat Deschamps" was announced. Deschamps is the man from the north of France, who had been a coal-miner before the war, the man whose wife and little boy are still "up there," the man who has not seen his family since he kissed them the fourth of August three years ago. A veil seemed to drop between me and the faces of my rosy, romping, noisy children.... I went slowly along the hall to our living-room. Yes there he was, poor Deschamps, the big, powerfully built fellow, a little thinner, a little more gaunt, a little whiter than when I had seen him last, although that was only a week ago. He rose up, very tall in his worn gray-blue uniform, not so neatly brushed as it had been, and put out a flaccid hand. "Bonsoir, madame ... excuse me for coming again so soon. I know I ought not to take your time. But when we are allowed to go out ... where shall I go? I know so few people in Paris" ... as though one would not be willing to give time when there is so tragically nothing else to give him! I say something cordial, take up my sewing, and settle myself for what I know is coming. Poor Deschamps! He needs only a word or two of sympathy when out he pours it all in a rush, the heartsick desolation of the uprooted exile, the disintegrating misery of the home-loving man without a home. Of late, alas! it does not come out very coherently. "You see, madame, we were so well off there. What could a man ask for more? My day in the mine began at four in the morning, but I was free at two in the afternoon, and I am very strong, as you see, so that I could go on working out of doors as long as the daylight lasted. We had our own house paid for, our own! And a big, big garden. I earned ten francs a day cash in the mines, and we almost lived out of our garden, so we were saving all the time. Our boy was to have a good schooling. Perhaps, we thought, he might be like Pasteur. You know his father was a simple tanner. My wife never had to work for others, never! She could stay there and have everything clean and pleasant and take care of the boy. We were so happy and always well.... We both worked in the garden, and people who garden are never sick. And always contented. And our garden ... you ought to see it ... all the potatoes we could eat I raised there, and early ones too! And all the cabbages and some to sell. The coal company sold us cheap all the manure we wanted from their stables, and I could make the land as rich, as rich! Such early vegetables! Better than any you can buy in the towns. And the winter ones ... you should see how we protect our cabbages in the winter...."