Armandine and Nicholas watched them eat with evident admiration, fairly drinking up their words when between mouthsful they would stop for breath and deign to speak. Their rustic eloquence was like magic balm poured onto a constantly burning, ulcerated sore. "Your son? Why, of course, he'll turn up!" the artilleryman assured them. "But he hasn't written a line!" "That's nothing. Now just suppose that correspondence is forbidden in his sector for the time being." "I know, but it's three months since we heard from him. We've written everywhere, to all the authorities, and never get any returns--except now and then a card saying that they're giving the matter their attention. That's an awfully bad sign, isn't it?" "Not at all, not at all," chimed in the _chasseur_. "Why, some of the missing have been found in other regiments, or even in the depots, and nobody knows how they got there. "Three months? Why, that's not long. After the battle of the Marne my poor old mother had them say Heaven knows how many masses for the repose of my soul; for four months and three days she never heard a thing of me, and I'd written her regularly every week. "Yes, and what are you going to do if the letter carrier gets killed, or the Boche locate the mail waggon on the road every other delivery? Nobody's going to inform you of the accident." "And that does happen often?" "Almost every day." "Quite a common occurrence; there's nothing for you to worry about yet, really now." So "hope springs eternal" in the breasts of the bereaved parents, whose smile gradually broadens out into a laugh when the artillery-man recounts some grotesque tale, and gives his joyous nature free rein. The convalescents who came to this particular city must have recuperated in the minimum of time, if _regime_ had anything to do with the re-establishment. In every house the cloth was always on the table, the door open in sign of welcome. "Come in and have a bite with us," people would call to them as they passed by. Certain among them were being treated for severe cases and had been in the city a long time. The townspeople were proud of their progress and their cure, almost as proud as of their notary, who on leaving for the front was only a second lieutenant, but now had command of a battalion of _chasseurs_. Nor must one forget Monsieur de P.'s son, cited for bravery among the aces, and least of all ignore Monsieur Dubois, who having lost both sons, shut up his house, settled his business and without telling any one went off and enlisted as a simple private at sixty-two years of age.