were dented and dull. There was something fine about the faces
collectively; there was a certain look of tried endurance and perils
bravely borne. I heard those on furlough telling the names of their home
villages to the officer in charge,--pleasant old names, Saint-Pierre aux
Vignes, La Tour du Roi.

A big, obese, middle-aged civilian dressed in a hideous greenish suit,
and wearing a pancake cap, sat opposite me in the compartment I had
chosen. There was a hard, unfriendly look in his large, fat-encircled
eyes, a big mustache curved straight out over his lips, and the short
finger nails of his square, puffy fingers were deeply rimmed with dirt.
He caught sight of me reading a copy of an English weekly, and after
staring at me with an interest not entirely free from a certain
hostility, retreated behind the pages of the "Matin," and began picking
his teeth. Possibly he belonged to that provincial and prejudiced
handful to whom England will always be "Perfidious Albion," or else he
took me for an English civilian dodging military service. The French
press was following the English recruiting campaign very closely, and
the system of volunteer service was not without its critics.
"Conscription being considered in England" (On discute la conscription
en Angleterre), announced the "Matin" discreetly.

It was high noon; the train had arrived at Angoulême, and was taking
aboard a crowd of convalescents. On the station platform, their faces
relentlessly illumined by the brilliant light, stood about thirty
soldiers; a few were leaning on canes, one was without a right arm, some
had still the pallor of the sick, others seemed able-bodied and hearty.
Every man wore on the bosom of his coat about half a dozen little
aluminum medals dangling from bows of tricolor ribbon. "Pour les
blessés, s'il vous plaît," cried a tall young woman in the costume and