“My father has a book-shop at Chartres, _j’adorais les livres et une bonne lampe_,” he added, so simply. And then a trench-stained comrade came up to him and they talked after this fashion—one couldn’t have done better oneself—while I mopped up the counter and refilled my jugs: “This country pleases me. I will come back and take a turn about after the war.” “_Mon vieux_, one should never return to a place where one has been happy; one is apt to find only regrets and disillusions. You are thinking of the young _boulangère_ here, but she herself will leave the town after the hostilities! And then what? _Un seul être vous manque et tout est dépeuplé!_ But nothing, however, counsels one to return to a place where one has suffered.” From this point of view one must say that the life of the _poilu_ is ideal, for when he will have tried all the fronts, including those of the Orient, the war will perhaps be over. And then they slung everything except the kitchen stove on their persons, and, thanking me, went out to be killed, or, in the very best event, to get _la bonne blessure_. One in a thousand, one in ten thousand gets it, _la bonne blessure_, indeed, not disfiguring, not incapacitating, and afterward, sometimes, decorations, honors. On the other side they say, “_Glück muss der Soldat haben_.” A strange, intense blue, like some outer curtain to the windows, announced the coming of dawn, and out of it appeared nine men shivering. “Why are you so cold?” I ask. “_Il fait du brouillard_,” said one, with a beard in a point and wearing a _béret_, such a man as would have gone into an inn of Rabelais’s time, _en route_ for some seat of war; and as he drank his big bowl of chocolate he added, “_Cela console_; toward dawn one’s courage is low.” Then a young, stone-deaf man with blue eyes and delicate, pink-skinned face came in with something vague and searching in his look. I didn’t realize in the first moment what was the matter, as I asked, did he want coffee or chocolate, but a comrade pointed to his ears and said, “Verdun.” He himself smiled, a dear young smile, but sudden tears came to my eyes and I slopped the coffee. A little before six we closed the canteen, which is always swept and garnished between six and seven, and went back to the house where Miss Worthington, who so admirably runs it in conjunction with Miss Alexander, lives. I lay me on a sofa with my shoes unlaced—my feet by that time were feeling like something boneless and bruised, mashed into something too small. Seven-thirty a great knocking at the door. “_L’alerte! A la cave, madame!_” I was then in a state where a bomb couldn’t hurry me, but, the knocks continuing, I finally got up and went down-stairs to find the lower floor full of people, too _blasé_ to go into the vaulted cellar below. “_Quelle comédie!_” said one woman. “_Moi, je m’en vais._” “_Quelle tragédie, si c’est pour vous cette fois_,” answered another, pressing her baby to her breast.