There is this satisfactory about a Frenchman—that rarely he disdains his origin. He is not the sort of man who spurns the ladder by which he mounted; rather does he contemplate with pleasure every rung of the way. Joffre, in that sense, is typically French. He rejoices in the modest origin which has given him the privilege of building his own fortune. But his pride and his independence come, I think, from his racial attributes. They are indigenous to the soil, to that fruitful soil of the Roussillon, the old province of France which came under the French crown in the reign of Louis XIV, in the middle of the seventeenth century, and as a result of the Treaty of the Pyrenees. Known to-day as the Eastern Pyrenees, and become one of the regular departments of France, it has preserved much of its old Spanish character. It has maintained a particular flavour, like the wine which grows in its smiling vineyards and the peaches that stretch for twenty kilometres, a vast and fertile garden, round Perpignan. The local capital is peculiarly Southern: sunny, wide-spaced, prosperous, embowered in handsome planes. The inhabitants wear the easy grace and captivating manner of people who, under a blue sky, do not find life too hard. Joffre’s town of Rivesaltes is close by, connected by tram and rail. It is less agreeable of aspect than Perpignan, there is less pride in appearances; indeed, it is thoroughly Spanish in style, even if French in the temper of its politics. The inhabitants speak Catalan like their brethren on the further side of the Pyrenees, where newspapers are produced in the tongue, but their sympathies are as wholly French as those of their famous townsman. And what a cult of him there is! Every café and most of the shops have a portrait of him on the large scale, as if a small reproduction would not suffice for his reputation. The album of a local tobacconist is a gallery of the great man in various stages of his development. Old inhabitants contribute anecdotes more or less authentic of his studious yet sturdy youth, of his kindness and modesty, of his astonishing simplicity. "Yes, he came here years ago and played _manille_ with his father and his father’s friends, and he would not allow his old acquaintances to change their manner of speaking to him; they were to say ’thee’ and ’thou’ as in the old days. His father’s bit of land had become flooded. ’You must cut trenches to drain off the water,’ he said to Joffre père, ’I know something about that; it is my métier.’..." When war broke out, the inhabitants had no doubt about anything. The country was safe. What was an invasion when Joffre was in command?