The convalescent patients from all branches of trade, who at different times had filled the rooms of the chateau, converted into wards, had been very deft at repairing everything in the way of furniture that the Germans had defaced or neglected to appropriate. There were many skilful carpenters and cabinet makers among them, and I saw visions of employing them at their own trade, producing both occupation, which they craved, and funds which they needed, but were too proud to accept as gifts, and what a surprise that room would be for H.! I even pushed my collector's mania so far as to pay a visit to an old bourgeois who lived in a little city called La Ferte-Milon, quite a bit north of us. The walls of his salon were ornamented with some charming eighteenth century paper representing the ports of France, and in excellent condition. I had long coveted it for my boudoir, and in days before the war had often dickered with him as to price. I now feared lest it should have been destroyed or disfigured, and regretted having wished to drive too keen a bargain, but on finding it intact, I am ashamed to say the collector's instinct got the better of the woman, and I used every conceivable argument to persuade him to come to my price. The old fellow was as obdurate as ever. "But," I suggested, "don't you realise what a risk you are taking? Suppose the Germans were to get back here again before you sell it? You're much nearer the front than we! You will not only lose your money, but the world will be minus one more good thing, and we've lost too many of those already." The withering glance with which this remark was received was as good as any discourse on patriotism. "The Germans back here? Never! Why at the rate we're going now it will be all over before Spring and you'll see what a price my paper will fetch just as soon as peace comes!" Peace! Peace! the word was on every lip, the thought in every heart, and yet every intelligence, every energy was bent on the prosecution of the most hateful warfare ever known. In all the universe it seemed to me that the wild animals were the only creatures really exempt from preoccupation about the fray. It might be war for man and the friends of man, but for them had come an unexpected reprieve, and even the more wary soon felt their exemption from pursuit. Man was so busy fighting his own kind that a wonderful armistice had unconsciously arisen between him and these creatures, and so birds and beasts, no longer frightened by his proximity, were indulging in a perfect revel of freedom.