While we talked, by a freak of luck, who should knock at my door but Lieutenant P----, chief of our local corps franc, a very good friend and one I am proud to have. He is the perfect quintessence of a French subaltern,--twenty-six years old, slight, wiry, and handsome; an Anglophile in everything relating to sport, as exquisite in dress and person as Beau Brummell, and as recklessly brave as Morgan's buccaneers. He has risen from the ranks, wears a gold bracelet, and has every decoration that a French soldier or officer can get, including the red ribbon. His Croix de Guerre has seven citations, and he has been five times wounded. He took to Jean at once, saying that he needed an interpreter for a raid which was coming in two or three days, and promised to see the captain about it at once. "Better come with us," he said to me, whimsically. "I want to run down to Paris next week, and if the sergeant here and I don't get a prisoner or two, it will be because there are none left in the first line. Come on--you'll see some fun!" "But," I said, "what is there in it for me? I'm ruined if I'm caught in any such escapade, and in any case I get no permission." "Oh, we'll fix that. Maybe you'd get a nice little wound like my last one; and if not, I'm an expert with grenades; I think I could toss one so you would just get an éclat or two in the legs--good for a week in Paris." I thanked him without enthusiasm and declined. The sequel to this came last night as I lay reading in my bunk. The evening had been absolutely quiet, not a rifle-shot along the trenches, until suddenly, about 10.30, the batteries set up their sullen thumping, mingled with the thud of exploding aerial torpedoes. To my ears, concentrated artillery fire--not too far off--has a strangely mournful sound--heavy, dull, and fitful, like a dark thunderstorm in Dante's hell. The bombardment lasted exactly forty minutes, then absolute silence except for an occasional pistol-shot (no one uses rifles in raids), and once more the sudden stammer of a mitrailleuse. As I lay there, safe in my warm bunk, I thought of gallant little P---- and jolly old lovelorn Jean, perhaps at that moment stealing through torn German wire with a brace of prisoners ahead of them, crouching low each time a star-shell sent up its warning trail of sparks,--or perhaps-- To-morrow, when I go back to the village for two days' rest, I shall look for them. _April 10, 1917_