He was lacking entirely in the historical sense, the sense that makes dead men alive; thus, in connection with the doings of present-day Frenchmen, his odds and ends of historical reading had little more meaning to him than the Late Gothic carving on the ornate portal of St. Nicholas. * * * * * The phase of warfare with which France familiarized him was not only secure and uneventful; as far as the native was concerned it was likewise prosperous. The town where he plodded through his daily toil was blessed as never before in the matter of trade and turnover; commercially it blossomed and bore good fruit in the deadly shade of the upas tree. The camps and the offices meant custom to its citizens, and, whatever the toll in the blood of its sons, it gained in its pocket by the war. The Germans, in 1914, had threatened but barely entered it; it had neither damage to repair nor extorted indemnity to recoup, and money flowed freely to the palms of its inhabitants from the pockets of the British soldier. Its neighbours, a few miles away, lay in hopeless ruin, their industries annihilated, their inhabitants scattered, their very outlines untraceable—beaten to death by that same chance of war which had spared the city in the cup of the hills and exalted her financial horn. Here were neither misery nor shell-holes; the local shopkeeper was solidly content, the local innkeeper banked cheerfully and often, the local farmer sold his produce to advantage and the volume of trade in the district expanded and burst new channels. Eating-houses broke out into English announcements concerning eggs, fried potatoes, and vegetables; English newspapers were plentiful as French in the shops and small boys cried them in the streets; and when the weekly market gathered in the shadow of St. Nicholas, to the stalls for hardware, fruit and cheap finery were added the stalls that did a roaring business in "souvenirs" for the English markets. * * * * *