was none of these things he wanted; he had only missed his train and
wanted to know what to do about it. But how were they to know that?
When a Latin misses his train he doesn't sit down stolidly and think
slowly.

I went to his aid. From the manner in which he rose to salute me they
guessed that I was the Commander-in-Chief of all the English, and
were for giving me an ovation. Thomas explained his trouble to me in
half-a-dozen words; I solved it for him in even fewer. Thomas and I
quite understood each other, and there was no want of sympathy and
fellow-feeling between us. To the small crowd, however, this was the
extreme of brutal curtness. They now thought I was of the English
_carabinieri_, and that Thomas was being led off to his execution.
They were visibly cowed.

But the situation is not so simple and clearly defined as it was in
the first place. In the old days either we were English and they
weren't, or they were French and we weren't. There was no _tertium
quid_. Now things are more complicated. As Thomas and I stood on the
platform, loving each other silently and unostentatiously, a cheery
musical train of _poilus_ laboured into the station. There was nothing
silent or curt about them: they were all for bread and chianti and
flowers and ovations or any other old thing the crowd cared to offer.
Anything for a jest and to pass the time of day. Between the French
troops and the Italian crowd the matter was clear enough. Next-door
neighbours, molested by the same gang of roughs in the same brutal
manner, quite understand each other and the general situation when
they climb over each other's garden fences to put the matter to
rights. It was the presence of Thomas and myself which put such an
odd complexion on the whole affair.