Yet there was never a tremor in the living wall encircling _la patrie_, no touch of despair in the letters that Dupont pencilled home in the intervals of bombardment. His natural gaiety found an expression there, as well as his courage and his calm. Letters from only sons, out of reach for the first time of maternal solicitude, manifested an almost disconcerting enjoyment of danger and the independent life. And those women who had feared hitherto for the health of their darlings now seemed to rejoice in new proofs of their courage and contempt of death. Lads, apparently the most deeply wedded to the soft and unheroic existence of towns, found an unexpected satisfaction in the strenuous routine of camps. The influence of the _milieu_, the daily contact with the hard practices and risks of the _métier_, riveted armour about the soul and bound the brows with brass. Men, whose habit in civil life led none to suspect the martial temperament, proved lions in the fight. And I knew a timid soul, a little delicate, much given to study and reflection who, after a few months’ actual experience of the trenches, became utterly changed. No longer apologising for existence as in the old days, he bore himself proudly in the field, and performed acts of exceptional bravery. Of his civilian friends he asked with strange calm: "Do you know how many Boches I’ve killed since the war began?" And in the surprised silence which followed, he gave a tally, which was staggeringly significant. Apart from the professional pride which dictated an air of gaiety, when a visitor arrived, the occupant of the trench did not in his off moments assume the mien of the troubadour. On the contrary, he looked grave and serious, and often austere. It was remarkable that when he went to Paris for a few days’ relief from the monotony of danger, he found little enjoyment in the old-time pleasures. And those who had been distinguished for a high thoughtlessness, for an abandonment to the Red Gods, proved hardy and virile warriors in the new life, with a speed that astonished all who had not realised the French adaptability. Frivolous in the days before the war, they now adopted an attitude of disapproval and even of positive disgust towards some outward symptoms of the "light heart."