the driver wouldn't try them and went round by the fields.

Of the flattened villages and the severed fruit-trees you will have read as
much as I have seen. It's a gruesome business, but one charred village is
much like another, and the sight is, alas, a familiar one nowadays. For me
all else was forgotten in speechless admiration of the French people. Their
self-restraint and adaptability are beyond words. These hundreds of honest
people, just relieved from the domineering of the Master Swine and restored
to their own good France again, were neither hysterical nor exhausted. They
were just their happy selves, very pleased about it all, standing in their
doorways, strolling about the market-place, watching the march of events as
one might watch a play. Every house had its tricolor bravely flying; where
they'd got them from so soon I don't know, but no Frenchman ever yet
failed, under any circumstances, to produce exactly the right thing at
exactly the right moment. There was a nice old Adjoint at the Mairie who
wasn't for doing any business at all, with the English or anyone else,
until a certain formality had been observed. He had a bottle of old brandy
in his cellar, which somehow or other had escaped the German eye these last
two years. This, said Monsieur, had first to be disposed of before any
other business could conceivably be entertained ... I gathered he had
risked much, everything possibly, in keeping this bottle two years; but
nothing on earth would induce him to retain it two minutes longer.

Madame, the doctor's wife, approached me as a friend with a request. Would
I expedite a letter to her people, to announce her restoration to liberty?
I was at Madame's disposal. She handed me the letter. I observed that the
envelope was not closed down. Madame's look indicated that this was
intentional, and her expression indicated that this was the sort of thing
she was used to.