He explained that his sergeant had misunderstood orders and told him to go out in his usual rig. The general, encountering the mule-skinner without his proper war-paint, had expressed his mind to him on the matter. “Jumpin’ Jupiter! but the langwidge that that old bird used! I sure will hand it to him! Why, my ears ain’t done burnin’ yet!” And he shook his head like a man half dazed. “What did he say?” The mule-skinner grew red as a beet, stared at me horrified. “I couldn’t repeat it, ma’am! I couldn’t repeat nary word of it!” That a general should so scandalize a mule-skinner, and a Texas mule-skinner at that, by his address, was so intriguing to my fancy that I laughed all the way home. We have a new colonel; he has declared that the regiment is not fit for the front, and so has laid out a two weeks’ programme of gruelling hikes and intensive training, in order at the eleventh hour to try to jack us up to standard. The Gendarme leaves tomorrow to go _en permission_. Goncourt, February 25. If I were God I would lay a blight on every grape-vine in France; then I would sink every still, wine press, distillery and brewery to the bottom of the sea. We have had payday. It happened Friday. The total results didn’t make themselves evident immediately; it was instead a cumulative effect, a crescendo, beginning Friday and reaching its climax yesterday. On these three days, out of the twenty-five hundred men stationed here, twenty-four hundred and ninety-three, I could take my oath, have come into the canteen and leaned over the counter, drunk;—that is to say, visibly and undeniably under the influence of liquor. When a lad, as some half dozen did,—those composing the regular attendance in the group about the fire,—came into the canteen entirely and unmistakably sober, one welcomed him as a drowning man does a spar. For a moment one had come in touch with something stable in a reeling world. Out of a company of two hundred and fifty last night ninety were capable of standing Retreat. I have learned to gauge the stages. When a man looks you squarely in the eye and declares vociferously, “Never took a drink in all my life!” he is very drunk indeed. And there is always someone nearby to wink and comment; “He must have joined the gang that pours it down with a funnel.” Saturday night a very red-faced lad came up to the counter and insisted on conversing; from each pocket in his raincoat protruded a long-necked bottle. I stood it for a few minutes, then: “Please,” I said, “won’t you take those bottles out of here? I just hate to see them.” “Bottles!” he expostulated. “What do you mean, _bottles_!” “I mean just those.” I pointed. “Why I ain’t got a bottle on me!” he burst out indignantly, fairly glaring at me. Seeing it was hopeless, I edged away toward the other end of the counter, leaving him standing there, a perfect picture of outraged and insulted virtue, with those bottles bristling all over him.