It is only periods of combat which are fruitful. To-day the altar is too peaceable. Too many questions are considered closed. I doubt if a St. Thomas or a St. Bonaventura would now vie with one another in love and genius to sing, as sincerely as did these saints of old, the flesh and the blood of Christ in the host. Mass said, we hastened to the ordinary. It consisted of soup and a morsel of pork. The distribution of the meal lasted until two. Then Dutrex, Durupt, the cooks, and I sat round the ministerial table to dine in our turn. It was late, and we were hungry. I furnished some cigars, smuggled goods. Dutrex provided tea, likewise smuggled. As there were eight of us and we had but four half-pint mugs, it was necessary to use four enamelled iron bowls—basins belonging to Fort Orff. The tea was lost in the bottom of these; one might have imagined it had been dispensed with a medicine-dropper. But how good it was! With our half-pint mugs and our bowls we clinked three times, drinking to France, to the destruction of autocracy and militarism in Europe, to those at home. Our meagre love-feast had quite a family air. Cooks and “ministers” alike, we all felt that we were truly brothers. After dinner, Dutrex, Durupt, and I went for a walk. There was a high wind as we strolled along the parapets. In shady corners, I was able to pluck some dwarf gentians, mosses, and lichens. I even discovered a tuft of dwarf heather from which the flowers had almost all fallen. I have arranged this posy in my campaigner’s mug. There it is, beside your portrait. If only we could hope to get away from here before it fades! Durupt left us to attend vespers, whilst I went on walking with Dutrex. At ordinary times he is a man of extreme reserve, fencing off his intimate soul, and all the more unapproachable in proportion as he becomes gayer; but to-day, as if in spite of himself, he was a little expansive. There had been a silence, and then he said: “Just at this hour, coming from his office, my father has doubtless been greeted by the words, ‘Still no news of the little one?’ I’m afraid I shall find them greatly aged.” “But, my dear fellow, they’ll get young again fast enough when they see you!” “I have a presentiment,” he suddenly exclaimed. “Look out at the view before us, this dead countryside. No smoke rises from Ingolstadt. There is not a soul in the fields. Does not this suggest defeat? Last Sunday there were still some men among the idlers at the gate who came to stare at the French. To-day there were only women and children. All their men are at the front. And this wind from France! I am sure that it is sweeping back their armies. I am confident that just now, when we were drinking our toasts, we were unwittingly celebrating a French victory.”