As we were about to return to Paris, we met a friend of M. Gaston Menier on his way from the latter's country-house near Villa-Cotterets, where the memorable _chasses a courre_ take place in the forest, which, under normal conditions, abounds in deer and stags. The chateau had been used as the headquarters of a brigade of Bavarian infantry. The house was intact, but some valuable furniture of the Louis XV period and some paintings had been destroyed, and the cellar, that had contained over two thousand bottles of excellent wine, including forty dozen bottles of champagne of the admirable vintage of 1904, had been "visited," and only seven bottles remained. The Bavarians, in pursuance of their practice in 1870, carried away all the clocks in the chateau. _Wednesday, September 16._ Forty-fifth day of the war. Sky heavily overcast. Southwesterly wind. Thermometer at five P.M. 15 degrees centigrade. After the victorious contest of the Marne, we are now to have the gigantic struggle of the Aisne. The battle now engaged, because the Franco-British pursuit has compelled the German armies all along the line to reenforce their rear guards and fight, extends some one hundred and fifty miles in length on one front from Noyon, the heights north of Vic-sur-Aisne, Soissons, Rheims, to Ville-sur-Tourbe, west of the wooded ridge of the Argonne. Another "front," where vigorous defence is made by the German eastern armies, extends from the eastern border of the Argonne to the Forges forest north of Verdun, some fifty miles long.