face of a thinker. But his mouth and jaw are those of a man of action,
and the look in his gray eyes is always changing. Now it is speculative
and analytic, now steely and cold.

In the shelter of a doorway stood a group of territorials, getting their
first real news of the battle from a Paris newspaper. I heard "Nous
avons reculé--huit kilomètres--le général Pétain--" A motor-lorry
drowned out the rest.

That night we were given orders to be ready to evacuate the château in
case the Boches advanced. The drivers slept in the ambulances, rising at
intervals through the night to warm their engines. The buzz of the
motors sounded through the tall pines of the château park, drowning out
the rumbling of the bombardment and the monotonous roaring of the flood.
Now and then a trench light, rising like a spectral star over the lines
on the Hauts de Meuse, would shine reflected in the river. At intervals
attendants carried down the swampy paths to the chapel the bodies of
soldiers who had died during the night. The cannon flashing was
terrific. Just before dawn, half a dozen batteries of "seventy-fives"
came in a swift trot down the shelled road; the men leaned over on their
steaming horses, the harnesses rattled and jingled, and the cavalcade
swept on, outlined a splendid instant against the mortar flashes and the
streaks of day.

On my morning trip a soldier with bandaged arm was put beside me on the
front seat. He was about forty years old; a wiry black beard gave a
certain fullness to his thin face, and his hands were pudgy and short of
finger. When he removed his helmet, I saw that he was bald. A bad cold
caused him to speak in a curious whispering tone, giving to everything
he said the character of a grotesque confidence.