The future Generalissimo was a flaxen-haired boy, with a light complexion and a firm, straightforward and kindly expression. There was certainly little of the Southerner either in his face or in the square-cut vigorous figure, but he had the independence of the Catalan in his character. Though an excellent comrade and full of fun, he did not like to be interfered with in his work, and was ready to fight his tormentors to secure quiet. Later, the kind blue eyes, wide set beneath the bushy eyebrows, grew steel-like in their expression when an acquaintance tried to take advantage of his amiability to advance a protégé. Joffre has a horror of the recommendation. "Let the young man make his own way as I have made mine," he would say; "that is the only sound method." All his life he has been opposed to patronage; it annoys him, he feels it to be unfair—a mean advantage. When he was appointed Chief-of-Staff, and eventually Commander-in-Chief, in 1911, he received visitors only once a fortnight at his office in the Invalides, because he wished to avoid, as much as possible, bores and protectors of interesting young men. Merit is the only channel which he recognises for advancement. The knowledge of his utter impartiality has robbed his decisions, often sternly disciplinary, of all personal sting. The army felt that in him they had a final court of appeal, pure and fearless. Boyhood’s days at Rivesaltes were unaccompanied by a luxury, which might have dulled the edge of fine ambitions. The little house in the narrow Rue des Grangers where he was born, remains the symbol of his simplicity. The humble bedroom, flanked by dining-room and kitchen, where he first saw the light, the store-room above served by an outside pulley for the raising of winter’s stores—all this speaks of a laborious and thrifty life such as the peasantry live hereabouts. The future General was one of eleven children of a working cooper. According to Joffre’s sister, the family, of Spanish origin and called Gouffre, is of noble descent; but its fortune had dwindled when Grandfather Joffre, leaving his native country for political reasons, started as a tradesman at Rivesaltes. He left no particular heritage to his son Joseph, the offspring of middle age, whom he seems utterly to have neglected. Joseph was little more than a working man with a patch of vineyard close to the town. But for a friendly uncle, struck by his intelligence, Joseph Jacques César Joffre—our Joffre—would not have enjoyed the education which was his at the _lycée_ at Perpignan and at the Polytechnique in Paris.