“For ours. Trainloads of wounded are coming back every day.” “Your wounded?” “Yes.” “In that case, it is for our side that things are going well!” “Possibly.” These women had such fat bodies and short legs as to produce an impression of caricature. Sergeant Foch, Alsatian and infantry chasseur, has a malicious wit. He was cogitating a joke, but I managed to induce him to suppress it. We walked on slowly, talking across the ditch, and the women said: “You treat our prisoners badly, and you finish off the wounded!” “Who told you that?” “It’s in the papers.” “All your papers lie, and you are stupid enough to believe them. It is just the same with the war news. You are beaten everywhere. It’s perfectly clear to any one who can read intelligently. Yet you believe yourselves to be the victors! The newspapers take their readers to be idiots. Is it possible that they are right? The real fact is that we are starved here, whilst in France, where people are rich and generous, your prisoners are fed on the fat of the land!” “It may be so. But it was those rascals of English who caused all the trouble. If only I had them here!” (the larger woman shook her fist). “The English are the apaches of Europe (_die Lumpen Europas_)!” Thus the conversation began. It must have lasted about half an hour. The conscientious Durupt “sowed discouragement” in the minds of his interlocutors, refusing to leave them until he felt that their confidence in victory had been undermined. SUNDAY _September 27, 1914._ I have been at work all the morning. At ten o’clock, Guido came to fetch me for mass. Under his arm he carried the great missal, borrowed from the curé of Lenting, in which he likes me to follow the service. The sermon was delivered by one of his colleagues. It filled me with astonishment, so harsh, so pitiless was its tone, reeking of fire and brimstone, representing God as a cross between a satrap and a bogy. The preacher seemed a veritable priest of Saturn. His firmness of conviction, be it noted, was absolute. But—shades of St. Francis of Assisi and St. Francis of Sales, where were you?