Well, to-day all these villages can be found on their own soil no more than in those guide-books. That, Fricourt! This grey blotch in front of the wood of the same name! That, the Public Square, that rectangle of tree-trunks! That? Yes, that is very surely Fricourt. All the villages are like that. Let us get on and you shall see for yourself. A short climb, but a stiff one, and we are in Mametz. You look about you and you see nothing at all. Believe me, I am not joking. The number of mounds and wooden crosses of every size that border the edges of the road tell us plainly enough at what a cost to both sides these ruined hamlets were captured. Another fight with the mud and we are in Montauban de Picardie. Montauban looks over all this plateau that lies between the Ancre and the Somme. In clear weather one can see everywhere around, and towards the North-west the houses of Bapaume are visible. To-day the clouds are too low and the rain too heavy for us to try to see anything at all. One can, moreover, look at nothing but the earth, for it is here that the story of recent events is most clearly to be read. [Illustration: 13. THE MADONNA OF ALBERT.] The first thing that one finds on entering Montauban is the little cemetery on the left. To enter the village it was necessary first to cross this cemetery; and to cross it, they had to "make jam" of it. Will you be so good as to consider what a cemetery is like when it has been made into jam? Grave-stones torn up and smashed, crosses thrown down, Christs crucified again, iron railings twisted grotesquely, vaults burst open, corpses.... Out of such a chaos, who shall ever retrieve the dear graves of his dead? And see these gaping holes where once were houses, these cellars laid bare, the bellows of the blacksmith, bits of the trough where baker Moulin kneaded his bread, splintered pieces of the chemist's bottles, the whole stock of the draper's at the corner--ribbons, thread and remnants--a fragment from the porch of the town hall, and on it the word "_Égalité_." Equality in suffering, one would say. But perhaps we may find some sign of peace beyond the village in the little wood of Bernafay, which in other days offered a calm retreat to the weary and a shelter to lovers. No! The wood of Bernafay is a wood no longer, and so it is with all the pretty woods of this neighbourhood, Trônes, Belville and Foureaux. How is one to describe this ghastly picture of roots, clayey soil freshly ploughed up, shattered trunks of every size, and dismal stumps, among which, none the less, the birds persist in their vain search for food and cover? These trees will bud again; Nature will clothe herself once more in green; even the earth that lies about us will yield new fruits. But the villages? What magical power shall call them back to life, unless it be the marvellous vitality of France--France, who refuses to die? CHAPTER VI "RONNY." This is not a Christmas story.