Now Guido returns from mass. Standing silent in the draughty doorway, he smokes his first cigarette. I instantly perceive that he has an idea, and ask for information. He thinks of nothing less than commemorating the melancholy jubilee of our capture by a cup of chocolate. A great thought, but difficult to realize! I hesitate. But Guido, egged on by hunger, is resolute. Knowing that I am on good terms with the kitchen, without further discussion he gives me a mess-tin and a few sticks of Suchard, saying, “You can manage it all right.” Doubtfully I make my way to the _Küche_. I open the door. A cloud of steam and smoke rushes out, enwraps me, and almost chokes me. In this fog I knock up against a Norman from the Auge valley—“Marie, the scullerymaid.” Without explanation I hand over what I am carrying. “That’s all right!” he says. I return to the casemate. “All well?” asks Guido. “All well,” I answer. In a few minutes Marie, alias Auguste, appears. He has the mien of a conspirator! Beneath his stained and greasy tunic he conceals as well as he can the hot vessel. With a secret air he says: “Here it is!” “Bravo!” I exclaim. But can this be my mess-tin? It is quite black, like the bottom of a cooking pot. The tin has melted and run into warty drops half-way up. Yes, it is really my mess-tin; but what a baptism of fire it must have experienced! Never mind. In a trice Guido makes a cunning hole in the straw to keep it hot and to conceal the windfall. Hurrah! everything is ready. In the casemate, stretched out on our blankets, we all await the dinner-hour. “Room 17!” comes the cry from without. We leap to our feet. Two by two, as is the custom in German barracks, we make our way to the kitchen—a long procession of individuals who chatter impatiently in the dark and evil-smelling passages. When we reach the happy door we are arrested by the order, “Halt.” We have to wait until those of room 16 have been served and dismissed. Now comes the moment. “Seventeen, enter!” orders Dutrex. We defile in front of the cauldron, and each man in turn holds out his bowl to the cook. This last, Davit, an Angevin, wearied of doing the same thing five hundred times in succession, handles the great ladle mechanically, absorbed in his own thoughts. His arms and shoulders are bare, and one cannot doubt that he has the torso of the Farnese Hercules. One by one, hastily and yet cautiously, we return to the casemate. Reclining in Roman fashion, seated or squatting, we crumble into the clear liquid, faintly sweetened, a little of our rye and barley bread, of the consistency of putty, and forming a pappy mass in the soup. The silence is religious. Eating is a solemn function in these days of scarcity. For a lengthy interval nothing is to be heard in the “square” but the rattling of spoons upon tin.