Of an old Southern family, the General was born (in 1851) at St. Affrique in the Aveyron, the old Rouergue which came to the French Crown under Henri IV. He likes to speak the _patois_ with soldiers from the district, but he is not democratic in the French sense of the word, though familiar in his dealings with the ranks and solicitous for their welfare. But he is exacting where discipline is concerned, and not only gives orders but sees that they are executed. His staff as well as his regimental officers respect his strenuous temper. His family is noted for intellectual distinction. Some of his brothers, as well as his sons, were at the Polytechnique, the famous mathematical school. He, himself, is both classical and mathematical. If he has little English and less German, and his pronunciation of English place-names amuses his Anglo-Saxon friends, he is a brilliant classic, and jokes in Latin, when the mood takes, with his staff. Nevertheless he is thoroughly modern in his appreciation of science and gives a chance to any likely inventor. Manufacturers are numbered amongst his family, and the largest coal-mine in the south belongs to it. His father, however, was a jurist and a friend of the economist, Le Play. The General’s vigour comes from the natural energy of his mind. In his boyhood there were few sports in France, but he likes to tell his intimates that he played a sort of football, with an inflated ball, in his _lycée_ in the mountains. His youngest son is a well-known champion of the Rugby game. Of his six sons, each went to the war. Three were already in the Army, one was at school, another in the Navy, and a third an engineer. The record is a tribute to the patriotism—no uncommon trait—of provincial France. And there are those who, ignorant of the austerity of her Catholic families, declared that France was decadent! Of the General’s six daughters—for Providence has blessed him with a full quiver—one has had her arm amputated, having been infected with gangrene whilst nursing in a hospital. Such courage and devotion are well exemplified in the mother, who heard of her son’s death whilst attending the little church where it is her habit to go daily. "Which one?" she asked, almost inaudibly of the _curé_, as she saw by his look of tenderness, that he had bad news to communicate. She thought of her husband, and of her sons at the Front, and when the name was pronounced, with a soft sigh of resignation she bowed her silvery head a little lower over the breviary, and proceeded with outward tranquillity, though with a torn heart, to receive the consolation of her religion.