Fort Vaux followed them from its observing stations and saw them break through by the southern breach. It aided them with its guns in the direction of Hardaumont and La Caillette. And its walls, which resounded under the enemy’s bombardment, seemed to tremble with joy, even as the hills of Israel leapt, at the deliverance of its old comrade. From the fort of Vaux to the pool the defences staked out on the slopes of the hill are connected by three redoubts or entrenchments more or less knocked to pieces, R¹, R², and R³ in the abbreviated style of the reports. Captain Delvert, who from May 17 to 24 has occupied R¹ with the 8th Company of the 101st Regiment, and who will occupy it again from May 31 to June 5, during the critical period, is one of those officers whom the war has revealed to themselves by abruptly withdrawing them from the civilian careers in which they had earned distinction. A student and a thinker, with a fellowship in history, he is the contemporary and was the close friend of Emile Clermont, the tender, subtle, and pathetic novelist of _Laure_ and _Amour Promis_, who before he was killed in a trench was able to draw lessons favourable to his inner development from the scenes of bloodshed which he held in instinctive horror. His generation was at that meeting-place of all the roads of the new age which has been marked by a certain indecision in all, or nearly all, of us in our turn: the war, making him a leader of men, will have prepared him for leadership in the intellectual world. He wears the Legion of Honour and the War Cross. Of middle height, with a sunburnt complexion, his eyes full of glittering fire behind his pince-nez, his voice low and his gestures eloquent, he has acquired the habit of looking at himself from outside recommended by Stendhal and his followers. He analyzes himself while he acts. He sees himself in action without being inconvenienced by the presence of this clear-sighted eye-witness. Accordingly he has a precise notion of all that is happening, and realizes the full significance of each event. The background of the canvas does not escape him; he can easily reproduce the stage-setting of the episodes, which he paints like an artist, with rapid, sweeping strokes and warm colours. Men of this type will later on make admirable chroniclers. At the most tragic moments he notices the statuesque pose of a bomb-thrower, or is capable of feeling the warm caress of a sunbeam. More than once I shall have recourse to the notes which he has allowed me to consult: the concise yet passionate style of his personal comments must be left to the imagination.