He would be in ordinary times a Frenchman of the stereotyped banal sort, and he was entirely without charm, though I dare say he is known as a _beau garçon_ in Lyons, where before the war he was _marchand de bois_. But the war transmutes everything it touches, and he, too, had undergone the subtle change. He said, quite simply for a man naturally fatuous, “_Je ne retrouverai jamais ma vie d’autre fois_.” I seemed to see what that life had been. Small but good business transactions; some success with women, as I said he would be considered as handsome; the theater; reading newspapers in a café; talking of the happenings of his quarter of the town—and the lamp of his soul burning only dimly. But even he has been caught up in the “chariot that rides the ridges” and must partake of _la haine et tous ses maux, la gloire et tous ses crimes_. We drop him at a crossroad and he takes a muddy side-path to the village where his regiment is billeted. At another crossway just out of the village of Vertus another officer was waiting. We called out, “Is this the road to Epernay?” And then, “Do you want a lift?” This time it was a dark-eyed young man with a kindling glance and something responsive and mercurial in his being, giving a sensation of personality, awake, running, a-thrill. He had twenty-four hours’ permission to go to Paris to see his mother, and had arrived to see the train pulling out of the little station. He also was waiting Fate at the crossroads, and crossroads in war-time are a favorite abode of Fate. He had been wounded near Suippes, lay twenty-four hours in a shell-hole, and was finally brought in by some man he didn’t know, whose head was blown off as he was pulling him into the trench. Something deep rustled in my heart at the vision of the splendor of that anonymity. Six months in hospital, six months of convalescing, and then a hunger for the front—_quorum pars fuit_. We were passing through a beautiful country of vineyards, Vertus, Mesnil, Avize, in the loveliness of graded greens, malachite, beryl, emerald, jasper, and stretches of aquamarine where the grapes had been powdered with the _mélange de Bordeaux_. Everywhere were little sharp, steep hills, their plantings taking all kinds of lights as they turned to east or west or south.