"We have found some bread," he said calmly to the innkeeper, "so you can bring luncheon." So, seated beside an Arab officer of _la Grande Tente_, dressed in a red burnous, we luncheon gaily with our guests, the soldier-chauffeurs of our motor car. When we left the inn to continue our journey the festival of the sun was at its height; it cast a glad light upon that ill-assorted throng and the strange motor-omnibuses. A convoy of German prisoners was crossing the square; bestial and sly of countenance they marched between our own soldiers, who kept time infinitely better than they; scarcely a glance was thrown at them. The old nun I spoke of, so old and so pure-eyed, was helping her Zouave to smoke a cigarette, holding it to his lips rather awkwardly with trembling, grandmotherly solicitude. At the same time she seemed to be telling him some quite amusing stories--with the innocent, ingenuous merriment of which good nuns have the secret--for they were both laughing. Who can say what little childish tale it may have been? An old parish priest, who was smoking his pipe near them--without any particular refinement, I am bound to admit--laughed, too, to see them laugh. And just as we were going into our car to continue our journey to those regions of horror where the cannon were thundering, a little girl of twelve ran and plucked a sheaf of autumn asters from her garden to deck us with flowers. What good people there are still in the world! And how greatly has the aggression of German savages reinforced those tender bonds of brotherhood that unite all who are truly of the human species. IV LETTER TO ENVER PASHA _Rochefort, September 4th, 1914._ MY DEAR AND GREAT FRIEND, Forgive my letter for the sake of my affection and admiration for yourself and of my regard for your country, which to some extent I have made my own. In the country round Tripoli you played the part of splendid hero, without fear and without reproach, holding your own, ten men against a thousand. In Thrace it was you who recovered Adrianople for Turkey, and this feat, the recapture of that town of heroes, you effected almost without bloodshed. Everywhere, with the violence necessitated by the circumstances, you suppressed cruelty and brigandage. I witnessed your indignation against the atrocities of the Bulgarians, and you yourself desired me to visit, in your service motor car, the ruins of those villages through which the assassins had passed. Well, I will tell you a fact of which you are doubtless yet ignorant: In Belgium, in France, and moreover _by order_, the Germans are committing these same abominations which the Bulgarians committed in your country, and they are a thousand times more detestable still, for the Bulgarians were primitive mountaineers under the influence of fanaticism, whereas these others are civilised. Civilised? So fundamental is their brutality that culture has no grasp of their souls and nothing can be expected of them.