Every one talked in subdued tones--it was only the wounded who were gay, gay with an amazing insouciance. True, there were the picture postcards in the shops--I had forgotten them--nothing more characteristically _macabre_ have I ever seen. One such I bought one morning--a lively sketch of a German soldier dragging a child's wooden horse behind him, and saluting his officer with, "Captain, here is the horse--I have slain the horseman" ("Mon Gabidaine, ch'ai due le cavalier, foila le cheval"). It was labelled "Un Heros." It was at this little town, on a memorable afternoon early in the war, that I was first admitted to the freedom of the soldiers of France. The ward was flooded with the soft lambent light of September sunshine, and it sheltered, I should say, some twenty-three men. Four were playing cards at the bedside of a cheerful youth, who a few weeks earlier had answered on tripping feet to the cry of "Garcon!" in a big Paris hotel, and was now a _sous-officier_ in 321st Regiment, recovering from wounds received in the thick of the fighting round Muelhausen. He was enjoying his convalescence. For a waiter to find himself waited upon was, he confided to me as the orderly brought in the soup, a peculiarly satisfying experience. Charles Lamb would have agreed with him. Has he not written that the ideal holiday is to watch another man doing your own job--particularly if he does it badly? The _sous-officier_ nearly wept with joy when, a moment later, the orderly upset the soup. With him was a plumber who was dealing the cards in that leisurely manner which appears to be one of the principal charms of the plumber's vocation. A paperhanger studied the wall-paper with a professional eye while he appropriated his cards. An Alsatian completed the party. In a distant corner a Turco, wearing his red fez upon his head, sat with his chin on his knees amid an improvised bivouac of bed-clothes and looked on uncomprehendingly. The rest smoked cigarettes and toyed with the voluptuous pages of _La Vie Parisienne_. The _sous-officier_, being an artiste in his way, had been giving me a histrionic exhibition of shell-fire. With a long intake and a discharge of the breath he imitated the sibilant flight of the projectiles and followed it up with a duck of his head over the counterpane. He extended his arms in a wide sweep to show the crater they make and indicated the height of the leaping earth. "_Quinze metres--comme ca, monsieur! Les Allemands? Ah! cochons!_ And they shoot execrably. We shoot from the shoulder (_sur l'epaule_)--so! They shoot under the arm (_sous le bras_)--so! And they like to join hands like children--they are afraid to go alone. They came out of the wood crouching like dogs--one behind the other. They are a bad lot--_canaille_. They hide guns in ambulance-waggons and mount them on church-towers. There was one of our sappers--_diable!_ they tied him to a telegraph-pole and lit a fire under him." "But you make them pay for that?"