The useful furniture of our casemate consists of the following articles: a ewer, a dish, and a lamp. I say “the useful furniture,” for we have also an imposing iron stove, some heavy bars of iron to barricade the doors and windows, and two pieces of sheet iron about half an inch thick. But there is no table. There was one at first, but they took it away from us to furnish the chapel, where it serves as altar. As for chairs, benches, stools, there is nothing of the sort. Consequently a man who wishes to write, and who has never written except seated at a table, is not likely to feel thoroughly at home in casemate 17. First I made myself a study out in the open, in a corner of the east court, on the steps of a little cement stairway in the slopes. I got some fine headaches there, sitting for hours in the sun without noticing it. But rainy weather having set in, it became necessary to seek shelter. It is at this point that Dutrex intervenes in my prison life—Corporal Dutrex, of martial and elegant figure, a strange compound of the ingratiating characteristics of childhood and the energy of manhood. At Bièvre, in Belgium, when the village of Messin was burning, and when under the fire of machine guns our soldiers were effacing themselves in the furrows, Dutrex, ammunition bag on shoulder and cigarette in mouth, walked unconcernedly from one rifleman to another distributing packets of cartridges. Arriving here with the first convoy on August 27th, his knowledge of German immediately led to his selection as interpreter to the commandant. By degrees he has become Major von Stengel’s right-hand man. I noticed the young fellow from the first. He is blond, with a long, fine moustache, with hair cut en brosse, thin, very erect. I remember that I felt a secret joy when I discovered that this simple corporal of the ⸺th occupied so important a position in the fort. It was pleasing that the German authorities should see France through the medium of this particular Frenchman. Too often have I had the misfortune to study the deficiencies of the official hierarchy, and the unanticipated revenge now taken by the natural hierarchy was agreeable to my reason. To Dutrex, then, one wet and gloomy morning, in quest of shelter for my pen, I explained my difficulties. He knew my _Ecoutes_, and we had been friends from the first. At noon he handed me the key of the double casemate, No. 55. With the permission of the commandant he has established a store here. From nine to ten daily, soap, slippers, brushes, blacking, string, and other little necessaries, are sold at cost price.