One morning I endeavoured to send a parcel to a French soldier; I took my place in a long line of waiting women bound on the same errand. A white-haired woman before me gave the post-office clerk infinite trouble. They are not renowned for their patience, and I marvelled at his gentleness, until he explained: "Her son died five weeks ago, but she still continues to send him parcels." To another old lady he pointed out that she had written two numbers on the parcel. "You don't want two numbers, mother. Which is your boy's number?--tell me, and I will strike out the other." "Leave them both," she answered. "Who knows whether my dear lad will be there to receive the parcel? If he is not, I want it to go to some other mother's son." Affection means much to these men who are suffering, and they respond at once to any sympathy shown to them. One man informed us with pride that when he left his native village he was "decked like an altar of the Blessed Virgin on the first of May." In other words, covered with flowers. There are but few lonely soldiers now, since those who have no families to write to them receive letters and parcels from the godmothers who have adopted them. The men anxiously await the news of their adopted relatives, and spend hours writing replies. They love to receive letters, but needless to say a parcel is even more welcome. I remember seeing one man writing page after page. I suggested to him that he must have a particularly charming godmother. "Mademoiselle," he replied, "I have no time for a godmother since I myself am a godfather." He then explained that far away in his village there was a young assistant in his shop, "And God knows the boy loves France, but both his lungs are touched, so they won't take him, but I write and tell him that the good God has given me strength for two, that I fight for him and for myself, and that we are both doing well for France." I went back in imagination to the village, I could see the glint in the boy's eyes, realised how the blood pulsed quicker through his veins at the sight of, not the personal pronoun "I" in the singular, but the plural "We are doing well for France": for one glorious moment he was part of the hosts of France and in spirit serving his Motherland. It is that spirit of the French nation that their enemies will never understand.